1. A thesaurus is a software tool included with some word processors that provides synonyms for selected words on command. Users using Microsoft Word can open a thesaurus by highlighting the word they want to look up and pressing the shortcut key Shift+F7.
Thesaurus and Dictionary
2. A thesaurus is a book, software program, or online service that provides alternative or similar words to a word. For example, searching for "hope" may return synonyms like "achievement," "faith," "ambition," and "optimism."
Thesaurus vs. dictionary
A thesaurus is used to group different words with the same meaning (synonyms) and similar words. On the other hand, a dictionary is meant to explain the definition of a word. For example, doing a lookup on the word "computer" in a thesaurus may give words like PC, CPU, calculator, abacus, and laptop that could be used in place of the word computer. Looking up the word "computer" in a dictionary would define the word like what is found on our computer definition.