Human brains don’t really work like reference books. When composing a letter, a writer will often let his or her mind ramble to come up with just the right word. One word brings up the idea of another, until the correct concept comes into focus.
When brainpower falls short, writers have relied on the traditional, bulky thesaurus for outside help. Now, however, Visual Thesaurus (www.plumbdesign.com/thesaurus/) is on the World Wide Web to help writers find words in a more creative way. Using Java applets, Visual Thesaurus mimics the way the human brain makes word associations.
Type in a word like “dragon,” and Visual Thesaurus starts to create a moving Web onscreen. Soon, connected to the original word, are suggestions such as “mythical creature,” “monster,” “fantastic beast.” Let the automatic function take over and the thesaurus will start “thinking,” moving in any direction it chooses. Soon “dragon” brings up “chimera” and on the process goes.
Visual Thesaurus has a few problems. It doesn’t know what to do with technical words, such as “photon,” and some of the synonyms are a tad strange. (“Cat” brings up “brute” and then, oddly, “wolf.”) The control panel isn’t immediately easy to understand.
However, Visual Thesaurus beats that old copy of Roget’s you’ve got on your desk. Plug in a nice word like “liquid” and you can nearly go into a trance looking at the synonyms.
