Can a word's inner life be revealed by the company it keeps? We set off this month to find out just that, examining April through the prism of the Visual Thesaurus and some other word investigation tools we keep in that big sideboard over against the wall of the Language Lounge.  Continue reading...

March is Women's History Month. In homage, we will clear a space on the davenport for all things female in the Language Lounge. English is a particularly apt place to study women's history, because it has fossilized many concepts and attitudes about women that are undergoing reappraisal today. Word associations in English reflect, to a very large degree, a historical rather than a contemporary take on woman; the Visual Thesaurus gives us a place to study these connections.  Continue reading...

Monologue and soliloquy mean about the same thing but you wouldn't know it by looking at the words, and you might not even guess that they had anything to do with speech. It's all because English has always been a compulsive borrower. That's the topic we explore this month in the Language Lounge.  Continue reading...

For a limited time, we're providing access to the beta version of the upcoming Visual Thesaurus International Edition free to all of our online subscribers.  Continue reading...

Small groups can now subscribe to the Visual Thesaurus and be billed automatically through one credit card.  Continue reading...

As part of the Visual Thesaurus version 3, we introduced a new subscription setting called "launch mode".  Continue reading...

Audio, spell-checking, and more! Learn about all the new features.  Continue reading...