Another Free and Useful Vocabulary Tool

This free tool is pretty cool: the Visual Thesaurus' VocabGrabber. When users copy and paste a passage that they'd like to use for vocabulary development, the tool selects, categorizes, and defines vocabulary words from the selection. In addition, the tool displays the targeted word in the parent site's graphic thesaurus (Visual Thesaurus) and provides examples from the entered text. Very nice.

One cautionary note: multi-meaning words, idioms, and professional jargon may be defined too narrowly, as in my illustrated example (above). Of course, funny mistakes can be teaching tools also.