Ask HN: How do you search for an appropriate English word?

Consider that you are writing a blog post or an essay. No one will have all the words we need at the tip of the tongue at all times. So when you struggle to find the appropriate word, what resource do you use to find the appropriate word? There are more than one ways to find a specific word. One is where we know a related word and look for its synonym/antonym. For example the word 'beautiful' is so overused, you would like to use a synonymous word which is more exact. The other is finding a related word where we know the surrounding context and try to use the appropriate word for that context. For example "a ________ pupil" you might want to describe a person who is a perfect pupil disciplined and intelligent. So how do you go about this type of search?

Do most of your search fall into 'synonymous' type or 'related words' type?

Not sure if this is what yo are looking for, but as a non native speaker, when I am not sure which word is appropriate in given context I will search the whole phrase. If it appears on obscure message boards then it is probably not what I the right word in the context, if it appears in ft.com then it is good to go. The quotation marks in the search are essential.

Pretty much yeah, I look for common synonyms and related words.

I think you might want to look at a thesaurus.

http://www.thesaurus.com/

i've gotten results by searching with many words to describe my intention into google

basically type the definition of the word you want, and google can find the actual word you're looking for.