Well, not really addicted. It's more like fixated.

No, that's not quite right either.

"It's an obsession," Davies confesses. "I can't escape from words. It's like a kid in a candy store."

Yes, Davies is a word nut. A lingo jingoist. A phraseo-phile. But at least this Brigham Young University linguist is putting his diction affliction to good use.

Davies has created an online, searchable index of English - as spoken, written and used by native speakers - to help non-natives around the globe master the language.

His collection - found on his Web site at http://view.byu.edu - allows English learners to stretch beyond definitions and rote memorization so they can understand how word combinations interact.

Not quite following? Let the Wordman of BYU spell it out for you.

Words such as "evil," "bad," "foul" and "wicked" essentially have the same meaning, Davies explains, but they are not entirely interchangeable.

A native English speaker may talk about "bad or foul" weather, for example, but few - outside of New Orleans perhaps - would refer to "evil" weather. A non-native, however, might use that clumsy combination.

"I am trying to help them to avoid those hiccups," Davies says.

It's a common misstep among English learners, according to Michael Dixon, who teaches English in mainland China.

"Students find it very difficult sometimes to know exactly how to use many of the more esoteric English words," Dixon says. "English dictionary definitions can be unclear in not defining idiomatic usage and English/Chinese dictionaries are too simplistic."

Enter the "view," a nickname for Davies' word-engineering Web site.

"[Students] have consistently told me that [it] makes them feel a lot more comfortable with word usage," Dixon says.

Davies essentially built his site by reworking the 100-million-word British National Corpus and adding a user-friendly interface. Users search an array of texts from newspapers, books, speeches, medical journals and more to find appropriate word combinations, relationships and other useful quirks.

"It's a little fancy-schmancy," Davies says. "But also easy enough for language learners."

Word is that Davies' database already is bridging the semantic gap. Thousands in 83 countries have logged on to it.

Frequent visitors include a psychiatrist at Columbia University developing cognitive tests for Alzheimer's patients, a sitcom writer scavenging for new puns, even a British pub-goer.

That pub-goer, Bob Myrons, says Davies' collection gives him an edge with his crowd.

"In Britain, we have a tradition called 'the Pub Quiz' in which people seek an evening's entertainment in a drinking establishment whilst simultaneously answering questions," Myrons says. "I try to inject life into [the quizzes]. [This] site has begun helping me to do this."

Language learning is not the only benefit. Davies says by searching word frequencies and associations, people can learn more about cultures, too.

"We don't consciously know a lot of things about language," Davies says. "We want to break that barrier." And not just for English.

Davies, with $300,000 in grant money from the National Endowment for the Humanities, has built a collection for Spanish and is close to finishing a Portuguese version.

No small task, says fellow BYU linguistics professor John Robertson.

"Mark, to be truthful, is right on the very cutting edge of linguistics," Robertson says. "The potential there is just absolutely unlimited."

Perhaps boundless. Or infinite. Maybe endless.

thollingshead@sltrib.com