How to find most common expressions starting with "iron"?

Question

I want to find a list of 2-word expressions starting with iron:

i.e. ironing board, iron filings, iron bridge

Can you suggest a vocabulary tool for that?

www.wordmaker.info (Select 'starting with', then enter iron in the search box). — Mellifluous, Mar 21, 2020 at 12:48
Do you want to include expressions starting with "irony", "ironic" or "ironton"? — user6726, Mar 21, 2020 at 16:21
it's easy to find words starting with a given prefix, I would like to find pars of wods that include iron, the most common words that that come after and previously in litteratre. JK answer is awesome, i am just waiting for the website to send me an email so i can activate and search :) — bandybabboon, Mar 21, 2020 at 17:43

Laurel · Accepted Answer · 2020-03-22 17:04:13Z

3

Using a BYU corpus, you can search for iron* _nn* where the first part matches words starting with “iron” and the second part matches nouns.

It’s as simple as typing that into the search box, though there are more complicated options available.

answered Mar 22, 2020 at 17:04

Laurel

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The query iron* _nn* has almost no recall on CoCA, it is better to use iron* * and filter out artefacts like iron . or iron is afterwards.
– Sir Cornflakes
Mar 25, 2020 at 16:26

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Sir Cornflakes · Accepted Answer · 2020-03-21 15:29:02Z

6

Using the Corpus Query Processor or a similar corpus engine with a suitable corpus to answer your question, the query

[word="[Ii]ron.*"][word=".*"]

and a frequency breakdown on the types does the job.

The more difficult thing is finding a "suitable" corpus, news, science, or literary texts will give different ranking lists.

answered Mar 21, 2020 at 15:29

Sir Cornflakes

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