26 January 2009
One of the downsides of digital dictionaries is that you’re less likely to be sidetracked by an interesting word while you’re looking another one up. It’s happened to you; you’re flipping through the dictionary on your way to a word and another catches your eye. With digital searches, this is less likely to happen; the software takes you directly to the word you were looking for originally.
All this changes with the Visual Thesaurus by Thinkmap (www.visualthesaurus.com). When you look up a word, the Visual Thesaurus provides a branching graphic that shows the word’s relationships with other words (synonyms, antonyms, super/sub-categories, etc.) and different senses. Looking up the word cabinet, for example, results in four definitions: a head of state’s advisors, a cupboard, an electronic console, and a storage locker. And two clicks can take you to Kashag, the advisory board of the Tibetan government-in-exile.
The Visual Thesaurus is quickly becoming my preferred, fast reference tool for looking up words. It’s no OED, of course, but the OED is too clunky to use when you just want to check a usage or spelling. The Visual Thesaurus, with entries for 145,000 English words, is in the class of collegiate dictionaries—a “desktop” reference tool.
Sound files provide pronunciations (you can configure the software for British or American pronunciation). The online version also provides access to French, Italian, Spanish, German, and Dutch words. The software prompts you with choices if it thinks you’ve made a spelling error and you Google searches for the word or for images related to that word are only one click away.
While it’s easy and fast to look up words, it’s not easy to reference the results. The Visual Thesaurus needs an easy way to cut and paste definitions and to provide IPA character-based pronunciations in addition to the sound files. Also, it would be great if one could produce an image (e.g., jpg format) of the word tree for reproduction elsewhere.
Another quirk is that the parts of speech displayed do not include prepositions or conjunctions. Prepositions are listed as either adjectives or adverbs and conjunctions aren’t included at all. These aren’t major failings. Prepositions are included, just not listed as such, and no one will seriously be using the reference to look up conjunctions.
The downside to all this is that it is not free. An individual subscription is $19.95 per year. For those who need to use it on systems without an internet connection, a CD-ROM or download version is available for $39.95 + shipping. Institutional and volume pricing is available.
