Synosaurus is a thesaurus fontend for Emacs with pluggable backends.

• Synosaurus is available from MELPA. Install it with:

  M-x package-install synosaurus
      

  Or if you really want to install it manually, add the synosaurus directory to your load-path:

  (add-to-list 'load-path "/path/to/synosaurus")
      

• Then enable the minor mode with synosaurus-mode.

The main commands for you to use are:

synosaurus-lookup

Queries you for a word, looks it up in the thesaurus and shows you a list of alternatives. You can click or press RET on these alternatives to look them up instead.

synosaurus-choose-and-replace

Look up the word under the cursor, asks you to select one of the alternatives and replaces the original word with you selection. You can configure different methods for the alternative selection, see below.

synosaurus-choose-and-insert

Asks for a word, presents a list of synonyms to choose from, and inserts the selected one into the current buffer.

The default keybindings are:

Synosaurus can be configured through the normal customization interface of emacs. Take a look at:

M-x customize-group synosaurus

The individual options are:

• synosaurus-backend

  The thesaurus backend to use. This can also be set per buffer.

• synosaurus-choose-method

  The way, synosaurus-choose-and-replace should query you for alternatives. The following symbols are acceptable values.

  popup

  Use the library popup.el to show a popup with alternatives. This is recommended and the default, but you will need to install popup.el separately.

  ido

  Use IDO to show a nice fuzzy matching completing minibuffer.

  default

  Use the normal minibuffer completion.

Two thesaurus backends are implemented right now in various states of completion.

Openthesaurus is a open German thesaurus and is supported quite well, but needs an Internet connection to be queried. Its backend function is called synosaurus-backend-openthesaurus.

Wordnet is a English thesaurus, that can be installed as a separate program called wn, that is used offline. Wordnet can do lot’s of things other than simple lists of synonyms. Not many of these features are supported by synosaurus, yet. Wordnet’s backend function is called synosaurus-backend-wordnet.

• popup.el, if you want to use the popup method for choosing alternatives.