Comment by simonsarris
3 years ago
I built carefulwords.com simply because I wanted to type a word into the address bar and get a large list of synonyms and some historical quotes using the word quickly. For example:
https://carefulwords.com/solitude
https://carefulwords.com/think
etc. Also unlike thesaurus.com, the search bar actually focuses so you can just start typing!
It's not perfect, I need to do a lot of editing, but nonetheless I use it almost every time I write, now.
The site is a little over 30,000 static HTML pages built with a number of TypeScript scripts that compile some sources for synonyms, parts of speech, and the quotes.
It's worth noting the best thesaurus I've found is onelook. Compare to the solitude results
https://onelook.com/thesaurus/?s=solitude
This is by datamuse who also does rhymezone (https://datamuse.com/)
Onelook is incredible. Indispensable for any art of writing.
I don't particularly care about synonyms (when I consulted a thesaurus too much my writing became too flowery) but the historical quotes feature was just great! I can imagine downloading the full text of several of my favorite authors and index the words from that corpus.
Sometimes I know that a precise word for what I want to say exists, and I'll know it when I see it, but I can't quite remember it in the moment. In those cases I search thesaurus for synonyms to related words; or maybe ask ChatGPT these days.
This is wonderful, and fast too (because it’s static I guess)! Thanks for building it. I’ll be checking it when I need some inspirational quotes surrounding a word.
Slightly similarly, I made a searchable word list to help with doing or compiling puzzles: https://jawj.github.io/wordtools/ (the ‘anagrams’ link does nothing yet).
This is really cool! Could you please add a keyboard shortcut for focusing the input field? (perhaps a forward slash '/' like on Youtube or Github)
Sure thing, I'll add that tonight.
This is awesome! I'll definitely use it.
It'd be a one time stop for me if it supported definitions (similar to Collins Dictionary) but beggars can't be choosers.
I like it, especially the quotes. Reminds me of linguee.fr, which I use often while learning French.
Added as a Kagi bang! Love it.
this is lovely!! neat, clean and useful. I'm gonna use it, thanks for making it!