Progressive Wednesday

Use a Dictionary & Thesaurus Progressively

Problem:

Sure, sure, sure — you might be thinking, Hey Progressive Wednesday gals and guys, how in the name of all that is holy and sacred could you possibly search for the meaning of words and their synonyms more progressively? Believe you me, we thought the same. But as it turns out, you can.

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Make Progress:

As Mark Twain once wrote: “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and lighting bug.– You want your writing to sizzle, you want your text to be ebullient, effervescent at times, precise as a knife. If your language is appropriately variegated without seeming too erudite or painfully pedantic, well, you’re not just good, you’re Frosted-Flakes “Grrrrrreat!– Cogent writing is potent writing. While you’re at it, you might as well tacitly fill the tip jars of some privately owned businesses in the lexicon business.

1. Okay, to us, OneLook.com is the mac daddy of them all. One Look is a word search engine that allows you to hunt down definitions and translations from 931 online dictionaries indexing 7,563,812 words. If you’re not sure how to spell a word, you can rely on the engine’s ability to guess, or you can use its wildcard search feature. We’re fans of intellectual property so we dig that One Look “provides a way to find and explore third-party content but does not incorporate it directly into the site.– Besides clicking on links provided to definitions, One Look gives you a quick definition provided through “public domain and open source databases.– You can also use One Look to cheat on crosswords.

One Look is run by Datamuse, and generates revenue, like other search engines, through banner ads. The thing is, you can turn off these banner ads with the blessing of One Look. There’s even a Firefox search box plug-in available here. (To read more about why Firefox rocks the casbah, check out our Browse Progressively tool.)

We know we’re gushing, but we all-but worship this site. And you needn’t just take our word for it — One Look’s been high-fived by the New York Times, Houston Chronicle, USA Today, PC World, Yahoo!, and Entrepreneur.

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2. The OED puts other dictionaries to shame — it almost makes us feel bad for poor little Webster’s. But there’s two-fold trouble with the OED.

One: the OED is Forbes-400 expensive — $295 a year for an online version; $895.00 for the 20 volume, 22,000 page, book-shelf-breaking version; $295.00 for the CD-ROM version. Two: its content is absolutely massive — we’re talking over a half a million words.

However, that 500,000 is also plus. See, it’s the dictionary, the record of the English language, or to put it in their own words, “the accepted authority on the evolution of the English language over the last millennium.– Also, if you need or want to know the history of a word, this is the most legit place to look. If you’re lucky, and you probably are, your local library system pays for a subscription that you can access via their website. You’ll probably just need to enter your library card number. You might also live a stones throw from a college or university and be able to access the OED from computers on campus.

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3. Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com come to you from Lexico Publishing Group, LLC, “an independent, privately-held company based in Los Angeles, California, offering online reference and learning services through its destination Web sites, Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com– ¦, whose

mission is to promote lifelong learning and sharing of information with easy-to-use reference tools and interactive learning services.– And, frankly, they live up to their billing. The interface is easy on the eyes, and the content comes from a bevy of sources, including Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Law, Merriam-Webster’s Medical Dictionary, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, and The Random House Unabridged Dictionary. This is a great resource, and one whose URL is about as easy to remember as a URL can get, no string around your finger necessary. Thesaurus.com (beside being our favorite dinosaur that never was) is our favorite web-based synonym finder and is based on Roget’s New Millennium Thesaurus. Both sites make their kessef through fairly innocuous banner ads, and as an LLC ourselves, we don’t mind this at all.