How to use the thesaurus in Microsoft Word

Posted on December 7, 2008 at 5:11 am

Finding related words is a common issue with beginning writers with limited vocabulary. Either we want to add variation or we just want to pick the right words, the synonyms and antonyms coming from thesaurus is a good place to start.

To access the thesaurus follow the steps below:

type in MS Word the word that you want to get a thesaurus entry
right click the word then click “synonyms”
choose from one of the synonym entries of the word

In the example below I want to determine the other words for “Hazardous” so I saw the other words for it like dangerous, risky, perilous, etc…

Note: To replace the word with the new word, just click the word you want under the synonym choices.

Now for antonyms (opposite word meaning), follow the same steps above but click “Thesaurus” instead:

The Thesaurus panel will appear at the right part of the MS Word screen. You will see a list of words with the same meaning and at the bottom, a word with an opposite meaning marked with “Antonym”. Click the word marked with “Antonym” to access the list of words with the opposite meaning:

You should see the list of words related to that chosen antonym:

With the thesaurus capability, MS Office users will be easily guided with finding the synonyms and antonyms. Use it to find the right words for your written documents.

For writers who demand more, you can use an online reference like http://thesaurus.reference.com.

It’s list of synonyms of the word “harmful” is more impressive (than the MS Office Thesaurus):

http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/harmful