TL;DR

I needed a list of adjectives, Dwarf Fortress helped me get one.

So it happens that I need - well, want - a list of adjectives for some generative idea. Looking around there are many, but then I figure that I wan a public domain one and avoid headaches.

Again, the mighty internet to the rescue: Where can I find a public domain or CC0 list of English adjectives? hits the nail right in the head.

It turns out that Dwarf Fortress saves the day. Beyond being an incredibly profound and addictive game, it doubles down on providing help when you need it. In how many more ways can that thing be amazing, I ask?

With absolutely no pretense of being useful, I whipped up a quick Perl program to extract adjectives, and here we are.

(Also in a local version).

If you’re curious to try it out, here is also the language_words.txt file.

Last, I know it sounds wasty and horrible, but:

perl df-get-words.pl | perl -E 'chomp(@x=<>); say $x[rand @x]'

is a way to print a random adjective on the command line.