Dictionary.com Breathes New Life into an Old Friend with "Thesaurus Rex"

First Updated English Thesaurus in 100-plus Years Reinvents Synonym Selection

News provided by

Mar 26, 2013, 08:00 ET

OAKLAND, Calif., March 26, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Today Dictionary.com (www.dictionary.com), the preferred online and mobiledictionary for students and professionals, announced the release of Thesaurus Rex by Dictionary.com, now available for iPhone and iPad. The app is the latest addition to Dictionary.com's growing collection of fun, useful and educational resources, and will complement an online version which is set to launch in May 2013.

Thesaurus Rex by Dictionary.com offers the first significant upgrade to any thesaurus in more than a century. "Because the English language is so dynamic, most people would be shocked to learn how static the world's thesauri have been – there hasn't been a substantive update to any major thesaurus in about 160 years," said David Wygant, VP of Product, Dictionary.com. "A re-envisioned thesaurus is long-overdue, and Dictionary.com is thrilled to offer it."

Instead of searching for synonyms in the traditional manner, writers can sort words by relevance, complexity and length, making it much easier to find that "perfect word." Additionally, in May Dictionary.com will add more than 500 words to its thesaurus which currently cannot be found in any online or print thesaurus.

Thesaurus Rex places the most up-to-date collection of synonyms and antonyms at the fingertips of students, writers, grammarians and people seeking just the right term with features such as:

Relevance: rank synonyms and discover the "best match" based on how closely a term's sense matches with the sense of the word you searched.
Complexity: sort synonyms based on their difficulty, adjusting the filter to either simplify or peruse terms that are more difficult, unusual or complex.
Length: filter synonyms based on character count – perfect for writing sparse advertising copy, lengthening an essay, or scaling to the specified length of any project.
Favorites: create your own unique lists of favorite synonyms, so you don't have to keep looking up the same word.
Examples & Tips: avoid common mistakes with usage notes and example sentences.
Word Origin & History: access important context and background on the words you search.
Rhymes & Syllables: enrich poetry and song lyrics with a comprehensive rhyming dictionary that allows you to sort by exact number of syllables.

"English has absorbed so many words and phrases from other languages that the task of selecting the most accurate or impactful word for a given situation can be daunting," said Lisa Sullivan-Cross, VP, Marketing and Business Development, Dictionary.com. "Thesaurus Rex will enable everyone -- from novice to professional – to more cogently and colorfully express their thoughts, feelings and creativity."

Learn more about synonyms in English and the proprietary features of Thesaurus Rex by Dictionary.com here. Thesaurus Rex by Dictionary.com is now available for download on iTunes.

About Dictionary.com
Dictionary.com's online and mobile properties are the leading destinations for learning and word discovery. An IAC (NASDAQ: IACI) company, Dictionary.com, LLC offers a family of free, advertising-supported sites including: Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com, Reference.com and the fast-growing WordDynamo.com. Dictionary.com is also the leading dictionary app on all major mobile platforms (iPhone, Android, iPad, Blackberry, & Windows) with apps that have been downloaded over 65 million times. Dictionary.com serves an average of 65 million unique users worldwide per month (source: March 2012 Quantcast and internal mobile usage data). For more information, please visit www.dictionary.com.

CONTACT: Michael Burke, MSR Communications for Dictionary.com, [email protected], +1-415-989-9000

SOURCE Dictionary.com