List of Best Free Dictionary/Thesaurus Utility – Download Freeware

Posted by Webmaster Blog 22 September, 2009

I’ve been using WordWeb [1] for a while now and have seen enough to say this will be one of the rare utilities I review that ends up staying on my PC. So what does it do? Well, it’s not a spellchecker so let’s get that out of the way. If that’s what you want, check the next item below. Rather, WordWeb is an enhanced dictionary and thesaurus. I say “enhanced” because it does some tricky extra things like showing only the relevant synonyms and related words according to whether they are noun, verb, adjective or adverb. It can also find words by pattern match or dictionary adjacency. Usage is simple; just select a word in any document and click the WordWeb tray icon. Immediately you’ll get a popup with the word’s meaning and synonyms. Overall, it works efficiently and elegantly to help you find the just right word to use in your written reports. WordWeb is free for personal use and a Pro version with an enhanced dictionary costs a mere $19 and is well worth buying. An equally attractive alternative to WordWeb is TheSage [2] from Sequence Publishing. Like WordWeb, it’s a comprehensive dictionary with over 140,000 references together with a powerful thesaurus. It differs in that it is free even for commercial use and offers a couple of features missing from the free version of WordPro such as anagram solving and wildcard word matches. On the minus side, WordPro allows you to find meanings and synonyms in any application just by double clicking the word; with TheSage you have to cut and paste it into the application after you’ve launched it from its task bar icon. Picking a winner here is too hard. Try both and decide for yourself. Both products work with Windows 95 and later.

[1] http://wordweb.info/ (6.96MB)
[2] http://www.sequencepublishing.com/thesage.html (8.3MB)