I am starting to do some creative writing. The commonly used dictionaries and thesauruses just don't do the English language justice. Can you recommend ones that would help me find AWAD words myself?

liz: Welcome!
Probably you've been there already but if not,

http://onelook.com/

I agree that onelook is probably the best starting point, specifically for dictionaries; however, a good all-around resource is: http://refdesk.com


In the upper right corner of the home page, you will see a drop-down box labeled "REFERENCE DESK". It has some nice dictionaries as well as a number of other useful tools.

Also remember that you can, in the Google search bar, type "Define curious" for example.

if you're using IE7 or Firefox, you can define multiple search engines where you (probably) now have Google or Live Search defaulted [in the upper right hand corner]. you might add, for instance, OneLook and refdesk* and Wikipedia and Bartleby and Answers.com and Ask.com and Thesaurus.com etc. etc. etc.

now, with all these resources just a click away, you can choose the one which is most applicable to your immediate needs and type the word or concept into the search box et viola's your aunt.

I believe many of these that I mentioned can be added directly via the "Manage Search Engine" (Firefox) or "Find more providers" (IE7) browser functions. but you can add most any web resource that you like via these same functions, not just the ones that are "canned"!

*Mozilla does have a plugin for refdesk, but it merely results in a refdesk search, which I don't find to be real useful.