For a non-native English speaker, like myself, it's easy to just use a translator app or website to come up with synonyms to a word I'm looking for.
Ask HN: How do you search for an appropriate English word?
31–40 of 56 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you search for an appropriate English word?
#32It is kind of interesting that people actually need to look for synonymous words, because if you have one word that describes what you want to express, why do you need another word for it? Well, it seems that when writing English prose, it is considered bad style to use the same word more than once in a paragraph, and the offense becomes greater when using the word more often. This "rule" is, from a logical standpoin…
It's not so much a hard rule as a "lint" warning for your language. If you're reusing the same adjective, either you're failing to distinguish between things or you should just delete subsequent uses of the adjective. For nouns, consider using "it".
Doing the opposite correctly is a powerful rhetorical technique: "by the people, of the people, and for the people".
Re: Ask HN: How do you search for an appropriate English word?
#33If I can't get a suggestion from DuckDuckGo or Google's instant answers, lately I've been going to Wiktionary. Surprisingly comprehensive, given I thought it was a neglected Wikipedia spinoff.
On a side note, Wiktionary would be 10x as useful if it was structured somehow, rather than being strictly formatted text.
Re: Ask HN: How do you search for an appropriate English word?
#34For a non-native English speaker, like myself, it's easy to just use a translator app or website to come up with synonyms to a word I'm looking for.
As an interesting sidenote, the more I use English everyday the more I find the myself doing the opposite. Struggling to figure out a proper translation in my native language to an English word.
Re: Ask HN: How do you search for an appropriate English word?
#35It is kind of interesting that people actually need to look for synonymous words, because if you have one word that describes what you want to express, why do you need another word for it? Well, it seems that when writing English prose, it is considered bad style to use the same word more than once in a paragraph, and the offense becomes greater when using the word more often. This "rule" is, from a logical standpoin…
You don't think that over using the same word in close proximity jars and just looks clunky.
Re: Ask HN: How do you search for an appropriate English word?
#36English is my second language so I need this often. I either use wiktionary, or google translate. In translated text you can click the word to get alternate translations that will point you in the right direction.
Re: Ask HN: How do you search for an appropriate English word?
#3799% of the time I type "[word] thesaurus" into Google. One of the many sites people are recommending here tends to come up top.
Re: Ask HN: How do you search for an appropriate English word?
#38http://dico.isc.cnrs.fr/dico/en/search
I use this for both English and French synonyms. Fast, light and all words are hyperlinked. It does not provide definitions but uses scientific methods to establish synonyms.
Re: Ask HN: How do you search for an appropriate English word?
#39When writing in MS Word the synonym suggestions from the right click context menu are pretty good and I like that it doesn't require a change in tab/window. Chrome has at least one extension that provides the same functionality but I haven't tried it so I can't say if the suggestions are any good.
Re: Ask HN: How do you search for an appropriate English word?
#40Wordnet: Let you go up/down the hierarchy and to siblings.