Nisus Thesaurus 12+

This can't be your only thesaurus if you're interested in genuinely exploring the words behind a concept that's on the tip of your brain. A few common words have a nice range of suggestions, but it wasn't the kind of broad spectrum of esoteric associations implied in the picture for what I've tried so far.

Ex: "Critical = decisive, vital" … If either of those were helpful then it's seriously unlikely that a thesaurus is going to make the difference in polishing up whatever it is you're writing.

I wish I could be more specific, but I can't find the words. If only I had good thesaurus. :-/

Nisus Thesaurus has several features that make it the best choice for non-native speakers. The old-fashioned style of thesaurus is not very helpful for English learners because they typically don't know the meaning of the suggested synonyms and so end up choosing a word that doesn't make sense for their particular context. Nisus Thesaurus, on the other hand, provides a list of possible meanings for the word you look up, and then makes it clear which synonyms are appropriate for which definition. Even better, it lets you choose 'more specific' or 'more general' synonyms, so a non-native speaker can avoid choosing a word with an overly narrow meaning.

I have recommended this thesaurus to my international students, but I was disappointed to discover that they can't use it on their smartphones. Please make this thesaurus available as an app for iPhone and iPad!!!!!!

When I am translating documents, I use the thesaurus all the time to help me find words that are as specific as the original. The thesaurus included in the Mac OS is not up to the job, so I wanted an alternative. Sadly, this is not it. I found the interface to be extremely annoying, and there were a lot of words that didn’t show up at all, or at most had a “related” word (for example, I tried “stretchy”. A thesaurus should list elastic, flexible, pliable, etc… Nisus didn’t have any of those). If you are a serious writer, I think the only alternative is to use MS Word, which has a built-in, off-line thesaurus that is ten times as useful as this one, offering more words, and dropping your choice directly into the text.