Mac 101: system-wide thesaurus at the touch of a hotkey
As a Mac switcher, my Mac's built-in spelling and grammar checking has been a huge productivity boon for me. I'm someone who often gets stuck on a word, and since nothing's ever good enough for me, I've often wished that Leopard also included a built-in thesaurus. While that's not currently in the cards, there is an alternative. How many ways are there to say "Whoops?" Of course, Leopard does include a built-in thesaurus via Dictionary.app. See the continuation of this post for a screenshot. Thanks to everyone in the comments for keeping me honest.
If the Apple offering isn't to your liking, Nisus Thesaurus, a free app from Nisus Software, works as a standalone application and a system service. This means that it installs in the Services sub-menu of your Mac and is accessible from any program you use that is able to interact with the Services sub-menu. These applications include Mail, TextEdit, Safari, MacJournal, and countless others.
Once installed, using your new thesaurus is as simple as highlighting a word that you would like to look up, and pressing the Nisus Thesaurus Services sub-menu hotkey (Command -<). This will pop up the Nisus Thesaurus window with your word options only a click away. Select the word you would like to use as a replacement, press Command->, and voila; your new choice has replaced the original word.
Here's the Leopard version of the Oxford thesaurus in Dictionary.app for comparison:
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Source: http://www.nisus.com/Thesaurus/
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As a Mac switcher, my Mac's built-in spelling and grammar checking has been a huge productivity boon for me. I'm someone who often gets...
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Select a word, Ctl-click on it, Click "Look up in Dictionary"
Works in any app. Dictionary.app pops up with your choice of any or all of Dictionary, Thesaurus and Wikipedia.
Okay, well clearly I wasn't aware of the awesome built-in thesaurus functionality in Leopard (that Ctrl-Command D trick is way cool), but for people that are using Firefox or any of its derivatives, the Nisus Thesaurus tip still stands. For example, the back-end that drives TUAW is called Blogsmith, and unfortunately Blogsmith doesn't play nice with Safari. So if I want an integrated Thesaurus, I can't use the one that's built into Leopard, even though it is awesome.
Thanks for all the tips!
Vopat: I think it doesn't work in all apps. Try it on Safari, TextEdit, etc
May 10 2008 at 11:24 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyHey, thanks for the reply. I have tried it in mail and Safari to no avail. I an not sure what I am doing wrong. I have even tried to change the keyboard shortcut to something else and that didn't work either.
May 10 2008 at 11:43 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI am trying to look up a word using control-command-d while the arrow is hovering over a word with no succes. ANy sugestions?
May 10 2008 at 9:01 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyAre any of those keys mapped to some other functions? On a windows keyboard, I hold down the windows key, the left ctrl key, and the letter D then mouse over any word. Check your Dictionary app preferences? If it still doesn't work, perhaps you'd have to check with some forums. :)
Here's a way stupid question ... How do you trim the list of services from the "services" menu? I've got way more than I'll ever need, some are just plain dumb. If I could trim the list to a few that I need, it would be a lot more useful.
http://manytricks.com/servicescrubber/
May 10 2008 at 8:31 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyMichael's comment (#8) sums up exactly what I was going to say, only better. No extra software is needed to look up words in dictionary or thesaurus. Note that Spotlight only looks up entries in Leopard.
May 10 2008 at 1:59 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyYou can even use spotlight to look up a word and access the dictionary/thesaurus that way.
May 10 2008 at 1:54 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyLeopard does have a Thesauraus, Dictionary & the ability to use Wikipedia built right in to the system.
Check again.
Jason, my good man. Clearly your switch is not fully complete. OS X has a built in Oxford Thesaurus that is available wherever you can access the built in dictionary. Personally I prefer the contextual menu access as described by Mary above.
May 10 2008 at 1:00 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI will add that you can access the built in dictionary and thesaurus in many places in OS X, including contextual menus in all good apps (which excludes Word), the standalone Dictionary app, and the Apple widget. This, to many, is well known, but given that you apparently didn't know the Thesaurus existed, perhaps you don't. If you had opened the standalone Dictionary app, it hard to see how you missed the big interface button that says "Thesaurus".
May 10 2008 at 1:09 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyYou don't need to resort to the Dashboard, as Dictionary.app is sitting there right in the Applications folder. It's one of the things I keep in my Dock to avoid the distractions of Dashboard. The Leopard version also features Wikipedia. You can set it to look up 'Dictionary', 'Apple', 'Wikipedia' or 'All'.
May 10 2008 at 12:58 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyHot Apps on TUAW
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