A thesaurus for writers

Look up a word

Reading an entry

A general thesaurus pours every synonym into one list. This one keeps them apart by meaning, because “happy” as in pleased and “happy” as in lucky do not share their replacements.

• Common words first. Each list is sorted by how often the word appears in modern English, so the plain choice comes before the showy one.
• Labels. Formal, informal, slang, archaic, dated, and rare words are marked, and so are words that belong to one country.
• Period check. Where Wiktionary records when a word was first used, the entry says so, and it flags meanings that arrived much later than the word itself.
• Idioms and Roget. Idioms built on the word follow the synonyms, then the 1911 Roget category it sits in, with the words its editors put beside it.

Try awesome for a word whose meaning moved, or walk for one with more than one part of speech.

Lists for writers

Some questions are not about one word. These lists are drawn from the same sources, cut to what a writer is likely to look for.

• Idioms by meaning — Search for the idiom you half remember by what it means.
• Proverbs — Sayings and what they are used to say.
• Slang by era and region — 13 lists, dated where the record allows.
• Jargon by field — 14 professions, from sailing to surgery.
• Words to describe… — 8 topics: sounds, smells, light, weather, emotions, and more.