I'm surprised that nobody mentioned a thesaurus or a rhyming dictionary.
I have a contemporary Webster's New World Rhyming Dictionary which I use regularly, but my real secret weapon is a dog-eared copy of Walker's Rhyming Dictionary, which was printed in England in, I think, the twenties or thirties (it is undated) and I purchased second hand at the old Strand in Manahattan in the fifties. It describes itself as a Dictionary..."..in which the whole language is arranged according to its terminations". Basically it is a backwards dictionary (I don't think these exist any more) in which words are in reverse alphabetical order, and while it is a pain-in-the-ass to use - you have to think of all the possible word endings that could fit your rhyme on your own - the volume of words it contains dwarfs any other rhyming dictionary I have seen, and it is a great source of ideas.
Similarly, I have a number of contemporary thesaurii(?) but the one that turns me on is a fifty-plus year old Roget's - again from the Strand - that is held together with scotch tape.
Michael Cantor
[This message has been edited by Michael Cantor (edited December 18, 2002).]
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