http://dictionary.reference.com/

[I*heart*English]

I cannot stress enough how wonderful this website is.  Not only does it have correct spelling, pronunciation, AND definitions, but also a thesaurus function.  A thesaurus is absolutely invaluable when it comes to writing sdescs as well as mdescs to give them variety and flavor, and it gives you plenty of other adjectives and adverbs to use in emotes to make them more colorful and less repetitive.

http://dictionary.reference.com/  Use it!

[RunningMountain]

Yeah, dictionary.com has been my homepage for about 2 years now.

[Maybe42or54]

Don't overdo it.

[RunningMountain]

It has.

[Gilvar]

Another great one: http://www.spellcheck.net/

[Bestatte]

The problem with a spellchecker, is that it doesn't know that you mean "you're" when you type "your." (That's just one example; there are dozens.) Both are spelled correctly. Each means something different.

Using a dictionary rather than a spellchecker will teach you what the word means, so you can be sure you're using the right one.

[Delirium]

I know this works with Firefox. Not sure about other browsers.

Bookmarks -> Manage Bookmarks

Add a new bookmark.

Name it whatever you want.

Under 'location' put: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=%s

Under keyword put 'dict' (or some other easy to remember and short word).

Hit okay.

Now you can go to the address bar and type 'dict supercalifragilisticexpialidocious' and it will look that word up for you. Very quick and easy.

[Gilvar]

That is neat.

[Cavus]

http://www.webster.com

No sign-up,. It is free. Better than your link, and you can listen sound files freely.

[Krath]

Delirium, I do think I could marry you alone for that suggestion. Thanks This rocks!

[Quo]

Delirium rocks, and that tip should make it into the top three of mudding tools!
Another great site which I learned about on this board, and how to use it with that deliristic tip:
http://www.rhymezone.com/r/rhyme.cgi?Word=%s&typeofrhyme=rel&org1=syl&org2=l
synonyms, definitions, examples, all you need :)

One more: a webster gateway if you need more than one opinion:
http://www.bennetyee.org/http_webster.cgi?method=exact&isindex=%s&db=*

%s already included - you only need to add the shortcut ;-) Those without firefox can use the base URLs:
http://www.rhymezone.com/
http://www.bennetyee.org/

Quo

PS: my favourite tool was the webster supllied with legendary NeXTStep. It would answer requests sent to it by telnet from the outside, so I had a definition in my mudclient for a command: def <word> and get the answer right in my mudding window. I loved it, but I can't find one reachable on the net any more, the local NeXT has been taken down some time ago.

[Avril]

I've been using  for quite a while, too, having switched from Merriam-Webster because it wasn't comprehesive enough. They did have a bigger, stuffier variant as well, called Merriam-Webster Unabridged, but that one charged you for the service of perusing it. Fucking capitalist pricks...

Note that you can find Unabridged entries in dictionary.reference.com, which is somewhat of a search engine, in that it plucks entries from other dictionaries and shows them in order.

Anyway, I'll say this straight: if you want to make beautiful emotes, ignore the thesaurus, or at least, check it out to learn some new words, but don't use them straight off. Replacing one word with another that means exactly the same thing is called a metonymy. It's a very simple and primitive form of metaphor, which will forfeit any benefit writing could have on your own mind. Rather than simply changing a word, try to also see what expressions could represent or hint at its meaning, and how you can arrange the words to make it look more interesting/prettier. You might, for instance, take "the moon" and look it up in the thesaurus, but you won't find "that big wad of green cheese you can make out through the smog", or "the night sky's guardian" or "the white maiden Lirathu" or whatever else you fancy. Don't take shortcuts - creative writing can reshape your mind into a wonderous contraption, so long as it's actually creative.

Oh, and don't use sentences like "<something happens> as <something happens>" a lot. That's just lazy. See how the two things correlate, and write that.

[facehugger]

http://dictionary.reference.com/tools/toolbar/

Put a toolbar in your browser.

[Cuusardo]

http://www.webster.com

No sign-up,. It is free. Better than your link, and you can listen sound files freely.

Dictionary.com has sound files, and last time I checked it's free.

[Seethe]

Very interesting take on a thesaurus.

http://www.visualthesaurus.com/online/

[Tamarin]

(This is an excerpt from a real conversation I recently had.  Censored of course...)

Q: you know dictionary.com will someday have definitive control over the entire english language
Tamarin: unless we stop using it
Q: its too convenient
Tamarin: true
Q: i can't stop using it
Tamarin: me neither

[Larrath]

People with zMUD can also use this handy trick:

Create an alias, give it a nice name, and make its command:
"#url http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=%1".

Now when you use this alias (and a thesaurus counterpart if you feel like it), you will conveniently be able to look up words without really leaving your client window.  Lookupword dapper - woohoo!


Also, people running Windows or Mac OS can just download CleverKeys.
It is a tiny program that lets you bind some keys so that you can lookup a highlighted word at the comfort of Ctrl+L.

[Xygax]

Very interesting take on a thesaurus.

http://www.visualthesaurus.com/online/

That is a very interesting site...  I actually interviewed a guy once who claimed to have invented that tree technology (something Xerox calls a hyperbolic tree, if I remember rightly)  

http://www.xrce.xerox.com/sys/htree/

Amusingly, this implementation seems to be cleaner and more fun than Xerox'

[Agent_137]

Didn't xerox invent the GUI (Graphical user interface) along with the mouse?

They're crazy inventing-and-not-capitalizing-machines over there.

[Tamarin]

I thought apple did that...

[Xygax]

I thought apple did that...

Xerox PARC was the first interface to make use of the concept of task "windows."

[Tamarin]

That's cool.  I would have never figured it was xerox.

[flurry]

I would have thought Xerox copied someone else.

[Agent_137]

I would have thought Xerox copied someone else.

*rimshot*

[Tamarin]

ba dum bum...CHING