The problem of finding the perfect word

https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/rrc9bn/the_problem_of_finding_the_perfect_word/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

Example Problem

Right now, I am trying to think of a noun describing a particular emotional state. It's like when you notice something and suddenly you "get it." You may have previously known the relevant facts, and even heard others make the connections. However, only now, has it all become salient to you. This is the moment where your mouth unconsciously rests open, a bit of drool accumulates on your lips, and you bask in the weight of your personal discovery.

The word I am looking for has some connection with the following words, but isn't an exact synonym for any of them:

• Reflect

• Gawk

• Agape

• Realize

• Awaken

• Appreciate

• Internalize

• Understand

• Grok

• Salience

What word am I thinking of? Does it even exist? I don't know. I haven't thought of it yet.

Conventional Solutions

How do I approach this problem? Here are my methods:

• Roll my eyes into the back of my head and just look for the word in my mind.

• Describe the concept (as I have done above) to someone else, and see if a good word occurs to them.

• Query a thesaurus with related words (i.e. run through my bulleted list above).

These solutions work pretty well, but I wonder if there is a better solution for thinking of words. A technology solution.

My Dream Technology

I could imagine somebody doing some kind of network analysis using thesauruses (or something else) to develop a many dimensional mapping of words. I am a imagining a tool like the WebMd Symptom Checker, but for words. I could type a bunch of words into it, and it would search for the most plausible intersecting concept. Each output candidate could be assigned a score or probability, reflecting the level of correspondence with my inputs. It might suggest forking paths ("is this a positive word or a negative word?") that could further narrow down selections. It could provide example passages of text that either incorporate or are in some way adjacent to the range of concepts that I have submitted.

Value to me

My most immediate use of such a tool would be to improve my writing. To literally help me find the word I am looking for. However, I wonder if the best version of this tool could actually augment my reasoning. For example, I might be able to use it to pinpoint the exact emotion that I was feeling. One time, somebody told me that "frustration is a combination of anger and helplessness." I have often returned to that specific conceptual decomposition to understand the feelings of myself and others. There are probably lots of other useful decompositions that I am not aware of, and maybe this tool could help me discover them just when I needed them most.

Existing tools that I am aware of

My hope is that some version of this tool already exists and that someone can point me to it. Here are the closest things that I familiar with:

• The Onelook thesaurus is pretty good, but it's very focused on finding the most similar word, as opposed to discovering conceptual mappings between words. For example, you can't look up "Frustrating" and pull out the anger/helplessness idea.

• Vocabulary.com offers really high-quality extended definitions of words, but again, not a conceptual mapping.

• This 3D map of Wikipedia is neat, but doesn't seem to work very well.

• There are proprietary linguistic analysis tools that people use, such as the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count program. I have read papers that use them, but I have no personal experience with the tools. The engine categorizes words into different emotions, thinking styles, social concerns, and even parts of speech.

• Update: u/isovector suggested Word2vec, which looks very close to what I am looking for.

Do you have a good solution to this problem?