Your 'Pali Word by Word' initiative is admirable. It will be most
useful to go through most frequently occuring words.
To really clarify the sense of the words, I propose to choose those
occurences of the words when they are fully explained in the
Commentary. Sometimes we may be lucky to find explanations in the
suttas themselves, in Vibhanga or Patisambhidamagga. Thus we will get
both usage and authentic interpretation. Chattha Sangayana CD allows
to find such occurences easily. Frequently occuring words are in most
cases explained in the Commentary to Digha Nikaya. Yet I see no reason
to ignore, for example, Majjhima Nikaya or Sutta Nipata, if they will
be of use.
Thus we will be able to accomplish quite a project - to collect at
Tipitaka.net the examples of usage and authentic glosses for
frequently used Pali words. We can even sometimes leave the glosses
untranslated, as a kind of basic explanatory dictionary.