Here’s a nasty thought I had today. When you look up a word in a dictionary, you’ll find it’s defined in terms of other words. If you look up each of those words, you’ll find they’re defined in terms of yet more words. Repeat.

Question: will you eventually look up every word in the dictionary, or are there certain smaller sets of words which are defined only in terms of each other?

This is one of those things they’d make you do in hell, if only it existed. In the absence of a venue for repetetive-task torture, an online dictionary and a bit of perl will have to do.