The power of tilde

Tilde in Google makes a great but simple thesaurus and synonym checker

Last week, I sat with the students in my class as our librarian explained in great details the different techniques of searching databases. She is very good at the process. One of us, then rapt in attention to her class lecture asked her if a thesaurus or list of various medical synonym might be available somewhere on the web to quickly check up synonyms. She did not know one, but thought it was a good idea.

Yesterday for a research project, I was running a search when it occurred to me to check up some resources of finding synonyms, perhaps while running a google search. When I came up with this superbly written google guide.
It's a great resource; if you haven't checked it yet, you must.

So, this is what I think might be a good strategy (at least one that I am going to follow for other search engines). Check first on Google with a ~ (for example ~lycopene will fetch you both lycopenes and ideas about searching for tomato related stuff :)...), and then use the synonyms.

Happy hunting information!