Lexical field

Reading a result

Each word can carry up to three indications, shown only when the corpus knows them.

• Language level — Ilena uses the CEFR scale, from A1 to C2. It does not measure whether a word is “good” or “bad”: it says how common, how familiar or how demanding it is for a reader or a listener. A1 and A2 are the very common vocabulary, understood at once by almost everyone. B1 and B2 cover the everyday vocabulary of an adult at ease in the language. C1 and C2 gather the rarer words — precise, literary, technical, or less immediately accessible. For a song this can be decisive: a chorus meant to be understood on first hearing usually gains by staying in the simple levels, while a closing line or a strong image can carry a rarer word perfectly well.
• Register — formal, neutral or informal. Mixing registers can give a text life; staying inside one can quickly make it monotonous.
• Emotion — because one and the same lexical world can be tender, dark, violent or nostalgic depending on the words chosen.

These indications do not say what to write. They show the colour each word can bring.

Writing around a word

Always repeating the same word weighs a text down. Systematically replacing it with a synonym can feel artificial.

The lexical field opens a third way: evoking an idea without naming it directly.

For sea you can write salt, hull, horizon, tide. None of those words replaces sea. Together, they build its world.

That is how a verse, a chorus or a bridge can stay in the same world without circling the same word.

Going further

If you write lyrics, see also Ilena for songwriters. If you work mainly in poetry, see Ilena for poets. On building a whole piece this way, read how to write a poem; for meaning rather than world, the thesaurus answers the same corpus.