Wed 2 Apr 2008
Catching Up
Posted by Brian Kariger under Company News, New Products and Services, Dictionary.com
Have you heard the news? Audio pronunciations are now free on Dictionary.com. Look up a word and click on the speaker icon to hear how to say it.
Illustrations are free now too.
And we won’t bother you with pop-under advertising anymore.
Sorry it took us so long to get back to you. When faced with a challenging economy and pressures to monetize every nook and cranny of your business, it pays to listen to your customers to learn what they truly need. So here we are.
How can we be more useful for you?
April 8th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
HAVE YOU HEARD THE NEWS?? When you search thesaurus.com for synonyms for “weaker”, the results are “woman” and “lady.” WTF is this Lexico??? Unacceptable on so many levels!
April 9th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Hello,
Would you care to comment on the issue being raised on Feministing.com and other blogs about sexist entries on Thesaurus.com? I doubt that any of the messages that readers are sending through the website are actually reaching humans, so here ya go.
April 17th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Reverse whatever you did to the thesaurus in the last few days!
April 19th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
I agree with LNS, as I presume s/he is referring to what seems to be a massive reduction in the number of words that come up in any thesaurus search. There used to be many more entries and, within each entry, a far more comprehensive list of synonyms. What happened?
April 30th, 2008 at 7:13 am
Please give us back the old thesaurus! It was the very best tool on the internet. It is now the MOST disappointing. Why did you make it so worthless?
April 30th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
I just logged onto my account after being away for a few weeks…
What happened to the best thesaurus on the web?
I am really disappointed with Thesaurus.com!! I’ve been using the site for years, and decided to pay for a membership last year out of appreciation because this was by far the best thesaurus on the web.
Today, I tried to look up a number of words and thought I was on the wrong site.
Instead of the pages of suggested synonyms resulting in great words that I could sometimes explore for an hour out of pure interest, I received only one entry on the page with two synonyms. That was it! For example, the word “immediate” returned two synonyms on Thesaurus.com, while it returned four on what used to be a sub-par thesaurus, Merriam-Webster.com.
I love to write, but because I suffer from severe ADHD, I tend to get stuck on words, which is not only very frustrating, but it can completely shutdown my progress when I write. Because of the ADHD, having a reliable thesaurus is very important to me. I could seriously care less about puzzles and the fact that the dictionary will “talk” to me. I pronounce words fine… Remembering all of them at once is where I run into problems.
I am very disappointed to now have a paid membership to what amounts to a useless site. Thesaurus.com didn’t even have a suggestion of a word to use instead of the word “manual”! That is pretty pitiful. I bet Merriam-Webster does…
Unless something changes, consider me a lost customer when my membership comes up for renewal. Maybe the talking dictionary will win back the customers I suspect you’ll lose from the downgrade of the thesaurus.
Oh well. I guess I’ll go google the word “thesaurus” and see what pops up, since I still have work to be done and I’m still having a case of “word-block”.
Kirsten
May 1st, 2008 at 10:28 pm
Thank you all for bringing up this issue, and you especially, Kirsten, since it clarifies that they didn’t remove the terrific thesaurus and leave it to members only. I thought I was going crazy when I entered a few words into the search and received so little in return. What happened? It’s not nearly as impressive as it once was, and it definitely needs to be returned to its previous magnificence as soon as possible. Please!
May 2nd, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Just chiming in to join the chorus of disappointment about the newly degraded Thesaurus.com.
As any public-relations consultant would tell you, lack of information will only further frustrate your users. Even if this is about licensing issues or other insider concerns, just be as candid as you can and provide users with the sense that you think they matter.
A remarkably useful site has been rendered near-useless. At least throw us a bone by satiating our curiosity about why it happened.
May 21st, 2008 at 6:28 am
I’m glad I’m not the only one. It’s a mystery, isn’t it? What would be the rationale for scaling back the site?
I hope they fix it . . .
May 22nd, 2008 at 11:54 am
I’m glad I’m not the only one who has noticed that the thesaurus has been … well, depleted. At first, I thought I was going crazy; words that used to have dozens of results now only have three or four. Why? I’m not sure that I understand the wisdom behind such a change; in fact, I came to this blog in hopes of finding an answer. I see that the issue about “weak” matching “woman” was addressed. (And thank you for that.) Maybe we can get some answers here too?
This thesaurus is something that I almost always have open on both my work and home computers. I am a writer, and I write a lot of material in a rather archaic style, and the former thesaurus was often instrumental in helping me to find the words that I needed to achieve meaning without sacrificing the style. Now, I find only “synonyms” that I could have found in the dictionary meaning of the word. I looked up “foe” and got four results. What?! Seriously, I’m better off with the old paperback thesaurus that I was required to buy when I was in the third grade.
Even if this change came about for reasons that mean it can’t be reversed, I would like to add my voice to those asking to know what is going on.
June 12th, 2008 at 10:48 am
Well to me personally i loved it the first time i used it .It was
very resourceful and helpful and its like being in college is hard so when i get a big assignment its definitely a great helper and some of my teachers even ask me where i get such words from but you know what i told them and they cant stop using it eithier. Even my friends are hooked and i was surprised because they don’t like anything i like.
But i love this website,
REBECCA MANN!!!
July 5th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
I have a question, this word has been bugging me, what’s the word that means “showy, especially in terms of education”?
July 15th, 2008 at 2:24 am
very very nice info.
July 30th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
So, I see there is still no response as to what has happened to the site…
It used to be a favorite of mine also.
July 31st, 2008 at 11:04 am
Are the respelling pronunciations (NOT THE IPA) on dictionary.com created by Random House - or are they from another source? I don’t think the citation for Random House Unabridged Dictionary correlates up with anything published by Random House. I need to be able to source the pronunciations that appear in the dictionary. Please clarify.
August 10th, 2008 at 5:41 am
“…When faced with a challenging economy and pressures to monetize every nook and cranny of your business,…
How can we be more useful for you?”
Start a revolution.
August 23rd, 2008 at 6:35 pm
New phrase-you heard it here from Bobb.
To Phelps…
Def.-Win everything you have done.