Synonyms (from a thesaurus) in Emacs

Question

I use Emacs 23 on Debian sid. I can check the spelling of a word in Emacs with M-$. How can I obtain synonyms (using a thesaurus?) for a word in Emacs?

None of the following were useful: one, two, three. If I download synonyms.el from the second link, where should I place it? Do I need to download a thesaurus as well?

Answer 1

The second link in my question ("the link") is a solution. Installation instructions and usage details are included in the synonyms.el file, which is linked on that page.

1. The synonyms.el file should be placed somewhere in your Emacs path.
2. A thesaurus file must be downloaded (see the link) and extracted.
3. Include (require 'synonyms) in ~/.emacs.
4. Call "synonyms" with M-x synonyms and enter the path to the thesaurus file (this can be configured as explained in the link).
5. Emacs then reads and builds the synonyms, and prompts for a cache file, which can also be configured as explained in the link.
6. Enter the word for which synonyms are required; the default entry (activated by just pressing RET) is the word under the cursor.
7. Emacs looks up the word (this takes a few seconds on my laptop) and presents the synonyms in a *Synonyms* buffer.

I do not know if it is possible to select a word from the buffer to replace the original word.

With respect to the author, whilst this does provided synonym look-up functionality in Emacs, I did not find it to be a convenient or quick solution. It may be easier to simply look up synonyms online when required.