The Twitter Thesaurus: Gives You Shorter Synonyms

If you are a Twitter addict, or someone who wants to appear less intelligent than you really are, you may like this site. It is a “word-shortening thesaurus.” Oh wait; using shorter words makes you look smarter, right? I don’t know, all I know is that you’ll fit more words into your tweets, and that’s all that really matters.

If you are unfamiliar with a thesaurus, it is a reference site/book where you will find synonyms for words. For example, if you type in the word box, it will give you other words that have similar meanings like bin, carton, crate, package and trunk. I use the online thesaurus almost every day when I write my posts. It is especially useful when you want to find substitutes for overused words like amazing and awesome.  It’s also useful if you type a word like nice in your post, and then realize you need a different word that has the same meaning but is a little more colorful.  It will suggest words like delightful, lovely, charming, swell, considerate and pleasant.

Thsrs is an online thesaurus, only shorter (get it?). I guess you could say it’s the unofficial Twitter thesaurus. You type in a word, and it not only gives you a synonym like a regular thesaurus, but it only gives you words with a shorter letter count. For example, I typed in the word telephone, and it gave me suggestions like phone, telecom, call, call up and ring. If you put in a super short word that has no shorter synonyms, it will let you know, so you can be reassured that you are using the shortest word possible to express yourself.

I’ve read that many of the people who consider themselves the “online grammar police” think this site is a bad idea, but why? It’s not like it gives grammatically incorrect words, they are just shorter. I worked the site for several minutes, and it worked well. I even put in the word booger thinking there is no way there is a shorter word for that. It gave me mucus, which is one character shorter. Cute.

Via: [Red Ferret] Image Credit: [Jezper / Shutterstock]