Thesauruses or Thesauri

Resources that aid in the choosing of a word by listing the synonyms or antonyms for words and/or distinguishing the difference between words that have similar meaning.

Resources in this category:

ARTFL Project: ROGET Form
http://humanities.uchicago.edu/orgs/ARTFL/forms_unrest/ROGET...

A forms-based search engine for Roget's Thesaurus, 1911 edition. Headword searches support full UNIX regular expressions.

The Free Dictionary
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/

This website provides access to English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian, Greek, and Russian dictionaries; English-language Medical, Legal, and Financial dictionaries; a Thesaurus, Encyclopedia, and other language resources.

Google Sets
http://labs.google.com/sets

This handy tool generates thematic lists based on the few list items that you enter to get it started.

Infoplease: All the Knowledge You Need
http://www.infoplease.com/

Online version of the popular almanac. Provides a wealth of facts, resources, and activities on a variety of subjects. An encyclopedia, almanac, dictionary, thesaurus, and atlas, all in one! Includes the Random House Websters College Dictionary and the Columbia Encyclopedia.

LookWayUp
http://lookwayup.com/free/dictionary.htm

This source translates from English to French, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, and Nederlands. The dictionaries also work from these languages back to English. Not only is this site a translation dictionary but it also allows you to search the meaning of a word or phrase on the web, see if any books have been written about it and more.

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary
http://www.merriam-webster.com/netdict.htm

An excellent hyperlinked dictionary and thesaurus, based on the Merriam-Webster dictionary. The search engine supports wildcards and right-hand truncation. A help page and pronunciation guide are included.

The Phrase Finder
http://www.phrases.org.uk/

This "phrase thesaurus and searchable database of a large collection of English phrases and sayings" can be used to find phrases related to a particular word, learn the meaning of a phrase, or determine the origin of a phrase. Also includes a book list of dictionaries, thesauri, and word phrase and origin books.

Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, 3rd ed.
http://www.bartleby.com/62/

An online version of the 1995 edition of Roget's II, a popular dictionary-style thesaurus. Search for an entry, or browse alphabetically.

Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, 3rd Ed.
http://www.bartleby.com/62/

The popular thesaurus, now online and searchable.

Roget's Thesaurus
http://thesaurus.reference.com/

The Internet edition of Roget's Thesaurus. Search for words or browse alphabetically and by word category.

VoyCabulary
http://www.voycabulary.com/

"VoyCabulary is a powerful web tool which will link web pages or phrases to online references like dictionaries or thesauruses -- This provides a convenient and speedy way to lookup words quickly and efficiently, without disrupting your normal web browsing... If you don't want to process a webpage, but have some text (maybe from a word processor), you may simply cut and paste it into the textbox and VoyCabulary will process it as well." Voycabulary includes an English Dictionary/Thesaurus as well as Medical, Acronym, and Computer dictionaries. Translations are available to and from English to Spanish, German, French, Japanese, Dutch, Swedish, Portuguese, Russian, Hungarian, and Welsh.

Wolfram|Alpha
http://www.wolframalpha.com/

Wolfram Alpha quickly locates facts, graphs, definitions, tables, numbers, formulas, and other data. Use the "Examples" page to browse and see all the different topics covered.

WordNet
http://wordnet.princeton.edu/

"WordNet is an on-line lexical reference system whose design is inspired by current psycholinguistic theories of human lexical memory. English nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are organized into synonym sets, each representing one underlying lexical concept. Different relations link the synonym sets." You can search for synonyms, antonyms, hyponyms, troponyms, familiarity, and other relationships. Requires a Java-enabled browser.

Wordsmyth Educational Dictionary-Thesaurus
http://www.wordsmyth.net/

"Wordsmyth is reference source that meshes the functions of a dictionary and a thesaurus with powerful and flexible search capabilities. The dictionary-thesaurus itself has been designed to emphasize full, supportive usage information in entries, including example sentences and phrases, and indicators of context and grammar. It offers extensive crossreferencing, too; for each meaning of a word, lists of synonyms and similar words are provided, each hyperlinked to its own, precise definition." Wordsmyth offers several kinds of searches, including searches for synonyms and similar words, and searching definitions to find a word. Several other features of interest to students, educators, and linguists are also available, including Words of the Week, a monthly newsletter, and a Cross Word Puzzle Solver.