August 16, 2010 -- San Mateo, CA -- WORDNIK.COM, the online dictionary and language resource, today launched a new, smarter online thesaurus that shows related words in context to help writers find the right word quickly and accurately.

Traditional online thesauruses show related words, but ignore context. They don't tell you that people like brownies that are moist but not brownies that are damp, or that it doesn't make sense to moisten your enthusiasm.

Wordnik's thesaurus lets you see words in real-world sentences drawn from a vast and constantly updated collection of texts. Whether a word was coined by Shakespeare or Sarah Palin, you'll find high-quality sentences to help you understand how that word is used by others, and how to use it correctly yourself.

Wordnik is also the first online thesaurus to let you compare words side-by-side. Want a more nuanced understanding of 'vacant' vs. 'void'? Viewing their definitions and example sentences next to each other reveals that they're not interchangeable: 'vacant' is often applied to jobs and properties, and 'void' often refers metaphorically to emptiness. Those nuances are missing from traditional online thesauruses and dictionaries.

The Wordnik.com thesaurus launched on August 16, 2010, and is available now at http://www.wordnik.com/thesaurus. Screenshots can be viewed at http://www.wordnik.com/preview/thesaurus. Wordnik CEO Erin McKean is available for interviews.

ABOUT WORDNIK

Wordnik's mission is to gather as much information as possible about as many words as possible and to share that information with as many people as possible. The company has information for more than nine million English words. Founded by Erin McKean, the former editor in chief of The New Oxford American Dictionary, Wordnik’s team includes experts in search engine architecture, social networking, computational linguistics and library science. For more information visit http://www.wordnik.com, follow us on Twitter (http://twitter.com/Wordnik), or email feedback@wordnik.com.

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Media Contact:
Erin McKean, Wordnik CEO, erin@wordnik.com, (773) 426-5938

Wordnik.com
60 E. 3rd Ave.
San Mateo, CA 94401
http://www.wordnik.com