Hacker News Reader

I looked at the synonyms and I have to disagree with your opinion. Can you elaborate on which synonyms gave you this impression?

View on HN

When I search Google for "brilliant" it gives these: "gifted, talented, virtuoso, genius, accomplished, ingenious, masterly, inventive, creative; intelligent, bright, clever, smart, astute, acute, brainy, intellectual, profound; skillful, able, expert, adept, elite, superior, crack, choice, first-class, first-rate, excellent; educated, scholarly, learned, erudite, cerebral; precocious". It cites that to english.oxforddictionaries.com.

And maybe three of those could lean towards morality. Someone could be a gifted sniper, a talented warmonger, an evil genius, an accomplished pick pocket, a creative criminal, an educated Ponzi scheme operator, or a profound mass murderer.

My point is that it's not a socially neutral term. Those are almost all positive associations in the synonyms.

I also think most of your phrases aren't things people would actually write, in that the adjective tone is dissonant with the noun. The one exception is evil genius, where I think the dissonance is the point.

Probably the synonyms in definition 3 here, like splendid, marvelous, wonderful, awesome? https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english-thesaur...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com