OneLook Dictionary: An Amazing Word Tool for All Writers
© Ugur Akinci
Sometimes I come across an online tool so different, useful and imaginative that I can’t help but sing its praises. The OneLook Dictionary (www.onelook.com) is one such application, available for free to all English writers of the world.
Imagine you are describing the way a room is furnished but you do not want to use the word “drapery” because you’ve already used it a sentence earlier.
How do you go about finding the semantic equivalents of the word “drapery”?
Simple. You go to OneLook and type “:drapery” in the search window and hit the search button. And you get back 39 semantic equivalents at your disposal.
Or, imagine you are trying to remember a phrase that included the word “drapery.” Solution: you type “*drapery” in the search window and hit the search button. And you get back 3 unique phrases that END with “drapery.”
What if you are interested in phrases that START with “drapery”? Easy. You type in “drapery*” in the search window and voila! You get back 6 unique phrases that start with “drapery.”
Other search possibilities, including searching with wildcards, are explained on the Index page of the web site.
If you love writing like I do I know you’ll spend endless hours playing around with this amazing tool to your heart’s content. Ahh, how great it is to be a kid again!
Very cool.
You should also try Wordnik: http://www.wordnik.com/
Here’s an article about it:
http://features.csmonitor.com/backstory/2009/03/16/new-online-dictionary-redefines-look-it-up/