I found this software about a week ago online and decided to download the trial version. I love all the cork-board features especially because my projects have so much research involved. I’ve spent a lot of time playing with the program, reading the tutorials, and learning how it all works. I really liked it. I loaded much of my project into Scrivener and this morning decided to actually purchase the program. Purchase complete, I sat down with my tea to spend the morning working on my manuscript, when suddenly I needed to check a word in the thesaurus. To my dismay, I can’t seem to find one any place. What I did find was a bunch of bickering posted on the wall about the way Stephen King doesn’t use one, so the rest of us shouldn’t either? There are two items pretty standard to a professional writer’s toolbox; The dictionary and the thesaurus. I don’t want to have to keep word open or some other program and use their thesauruses. Please tell me there is some plug in or I’m missing something, otherwise, I’ve probably made a mistake purchasing this product.
Scrivener uses the built-in OS X dictionary and thesaurus, so you can just ctrl-click on a word to bring up the menu and access that. Nisus also have a free thesaurus you can download and which I believe integrates with other apps, though I haven’t tested it for some time:
Please do bear in mind that you paid very a very reasonable price for something developed entirely by one person (me), and as a lone developer I cannot create my very own thesaurus on top of developing a complex and powerful application such as Scrivener - but all of the system dictionary and thesaurus tools are available to you, as well as third-party ones.
Thanks for buying.
All the best,
Keith
I’ve bought lots of software since getting my first Macbook. It’s not reasonable (court terminology) to expect any program to be made to own’s own personal specs. because we don’t all think alike. I think Scrivener is very well thought out through and I enjoy using it every day. Of all the software I’ve owned over the last 25 years, Scrivener is my favorite. I can’t believe I still get a chill up the spine on occasion when I just think about it. Weird, but true. It’s that good. If you want an additional feature, there’s nothing wrong with begging for it though. Sometimes it actually works.
Thanks for the kind words limember, much appreciated. 
In the case of a Thesaurus, it’s a rather massive undertaking - you have to get the data from a thesaurus somewhere (presumably with some copyright issues) and then keep it up to date each year, and have a UI for it. But as I say, it’s unnecessary anyway, as OS X already provides a thesaurus which can be used from within Scrivener. It’s not the best thesaurus in the world, but it’s just a case of selecting the word, choosing “Look Up in Dictionary and Thesaurus” from the ctrl-click menu, and then clicking on “Thesaurus” in the Dictionary app. (In 2.0 I’ve added the menu command to an Edit > Writing Tools submenu a la Pages to make it more obvious.) But it is quite workable already:
All the best,
Keith
If you prefer keyboard shortcuts, CTRL-CMD-D brings up a dictionary dialogue box for the word under the cursor. You can change the settings so that it shows the thesaurus instead, and with either option you can open the OS X dictionary for full details (dictionary, thesaurus and access to Wikipedia if you’re online).
Real men don’t need a thesaurus!
Hmmm, what’s another word for thesaurus?
Spell Catcher X has a very good thesaurus, and much, much more. It is sometimes offered as part of a software bundle or on sale so you could get it for much less than its regular $39.95 price. I got it at MacZOT this spring for 1/2 price. It works with virtually all Mac programs and is handier than soap-on-a-rope.
This is taken from their website…
Find the perfect word
Finding exactly the right word has never been easier. Use Spell Catcher’s thesaurus to find synonyms, antonyms, compared, related and contrasted words. Spell Catcher’s built-in U.S. English thesauri offer over two million responses for almost 120,000 words.
ceepeequu: Check my avatar. 
nib: wordfinder, wordbook or synonym dictionary (found using Ctrl-Cmd-D). 8)
If you have Quicksilver (and if you don’t, get it), you can select the word, press Cmd-Esc, tab over to the second panel, and begin typing in “Thesaurus” to look up the word in OS X’s Thesaurus.
Thank you for all the advice everyone. I’ve been using Spell Catcher and it works well. I am loving Scrivener and wish I had started using is about 8 months ago. I think it would have saved me a lot of time and headaches.
Best Wishes,
PS> Real men must have pretty limited vocabularies (ceepeequu)…I’m sure glad I’m a woman.
Keep in mind that our grunting is a tonal language, like Thai, and so we actually have a much larger vocabulary than mere phonemes* would suggest!
Matt
- Note to linguists: I apologize if I have used the term phonemes incorrectly here. I am not a linguist, and there is every possibility I have committed a horrible linguistic faux pas. Please don’t dob me in to Language Log. I would hate to be a victim of a scathing attack from Professor Pullum for my off-hand joke
Matt, you have clearly confused phonemes with pheromones. 
--Prof D.