Seven years ago, I wrote about James Somers’ beautiful article on John McPhee’s New Yorker article, Draft #4. If you write any prose at all, I urge, urge, you to read Somers’ article. It will be a revelation to you.
The very abbreviated TL;DR is that after McPhee has done all the creative work on a piece of writing, he looks for ways to “punch up his writing.” He does this by looking up words in his Webster’s 1913 dictionary. Read Somers for why the choice of dictionary is important.
For a long time the dictionary was available on line from the University of Chicago but, sadly, it disappeared and has not returned. Happily, Marcin Borkowski found a way to make the dictionary available from within Emacs. I’ve used it ever since when I’m stuck on finding the right word. If you’re an Emacser, you should follow Borkowski’s recipe and install it in your Emacs too.
I’m revisiting this because Mario Jason Braganza has rediscovered Somers’ post and, like me, was enchanted. Somers’ article tells you how to add the Webster’s 1913 to your macOS dictionary app so you can have it available even if you’re not an Emacs user. Braganza also points to a new on line version of the dictionary that I didn’t know about. Since I do virtually all my writing from within Emacs now, I no longer need an on line version but I’m glad to see this valuable resource available to everyone.