As a teenager I collected dictionaries for this very reason,it was exciting because each word became more than the sum of its letters but a treasure hunt that w

As a teenager I collected dictionaries for this very reason,it was exciting because each word became more than the sum of its letters but a treasure hunt that would last hours. Halfway through the article I thought he should just use an old edition of Merriam Webster or an Oxford Dictionary that predates the early 80s only to find that he does mention it. My word toolbox now consists of: * Old Dictionary , Oxford and sometimes Websters * Roget's Thesaurus * Online etymology tool * English Wordnet * Oxford's Modern English Usage by Fowler ( 2nd or 3rd edition ) - it's a hoot to read. * Samuel Johnson's Dictionary - if you want a nice bedside chuckle. There are many ways of slicing and dicing this data set to fit a particular writing style( e.g like Stephens King's no adverb policy,); If the data is ingested in a tree form , searching for word replacements based on Part Of Speech, sound or syllables , mitre is not that hard. Using these techniques doesn't necessarily make you a better writer but it sure does make it more fun!