  The study of the Tip of the Tongue phenomenon (TOT) provides valuable clues
and insights concerning the organisation of the mental lexicon (meaning, number
of syllables, relation with other words, etc.). This paper describes a tool
based on psycho-linguistic observations concerning the TOT phenomenon. We've
built it to enable a speaker/writer to find the word he is looking for, word he
may know, but which he is unable to access in time. We try to simulate the TOT
phenomenon by creating a situation where the system knows the target word, yet
is unable to access it. In order to find the target word we make use of the
paradigmatic and syntagmatic associations stored in the linguistic databases.
Our experiment allows the following conclusion: a tool like SVETLAN, capable to
structure (automatically) a dictionary by domains can be used sucessfully to
help the speaker/writer to find the word he is looking for, if it is combined
with a database rich in terms of paradigmatic links like EuroWordNet.
