"Visual Thesaurus" Maps Synonyms in a Fresh Way

Visual seems to be the word of the week of here at Paradise Tossed. Yesterday we introduced you to VisualPoetry, and today I want to tell you about a tool that's been around for a while, though you may not have discovered it yet. It's called Visual Thesaurus, and it's a stunning innovation of one of a poet's most important tools.

When poets get stuck on a particular word that doesn't seem to fit right, trusty old Roget's is often the first place they turn. And it does an admirable job, producing for the befuddled wordsmith a quick, neat list of synonyms. It's hard to improve on a reference book that does its job so well: hard, but not impossible.

Thanks to Thinkmap's visualization technology, Visual Thesaurus provides us with the same synonyms that Roget does, but in an intuitive interface that allows our minds to instantly make connections between words.

I think you'll agree that as poets we desperately need access to the often slippery connections between words, and Visual Thesaurus gives us such access. As you can see above, synonyms are arranged in a map with the original word in the center. Each dot branching off from the original word represents a single definition, and each definition has its own set of synonyms.

This simulates the way our minds think about words and the synonyms related to them. We tend to think in terms of interrelated synonyms, not in just static, though complete, lists of similar words. And naturally, each word on the map can be clicked on to produce a new map with that word in the center, allowing cascades of connections that the mind can easily process.

Like all good things, the Visual Thesaurus has its price. But it runs in a desktop edition for a one-time fee and a web edition on a subscription basis, so you can decide how much you want to invest in this product. But any way you slice it [or cut or slash or gash it], Visual Thesaurus can be a great way to add spice to your poetry.