What's that word again...

Words to use instead of common ones:

Words to replace said - grouped according to usage and emotion so actually helpful.
Words to use instead of SAID - words separated by categories and emotions. (Definitions and examples for the words provided)
An infographic of said replacements - grouped by usage/intent (rebloggable tumblr post)
A similar list of said replacements (wayback machine link)
Said replacements, another list.
More said replacements grouped by emotion/tone
Synonyms for the most commonly used words of the English language
100 Ways to Say "Good"
Synonyms For Very (as in 'Very afraid=fearful', 'Very happy=ecstatic' etc)
45 ways to avoid saying "very"
50 ways to say 'looks' or 'seems like'
Words to use instead of ‘Look’
Powerful and Meaningful Verbs to Use in an Analysis (Alternatives to Show) (wayback machine link)
250 Words for "Went"
200 words that describe light (physical descriptions, types and anthropomorphisms)

Descriptive words:

Words to describe taste, smell and sound
Words to describe smells (wayback machine link)
209 Words to describe touch
Geographic descriptions for writers
150 words to describe the taste of food
Aroma Chart - descriptive breakdown of smells by odor, intensity, complexity and quality
Aroma and Taste Chart -detailed descriptive breakdown of words to describe aromas and tastes

Describing body language, emotions, people, places and things:

100 Words to Describe Someone's Body (wayback machine link)
Hair Color Reference Chart
Words to Describe Hair (focused on Afro/Curly styles and headcoverings)
Writing with Color's guide to describing skin tone
100 Words for Facial Expressions
Words to describe someone's voice
240 Words to Describe Someone’s Tone/Voice (wayback machine link)
Tone Vocab List - by positive, negative, humor, worrying, neutral, etc grouping
Masterlist of Physical Descriptions (only moderately helpful and not easy to navigate)
Masterlist of categorized links on writing expressions
A list of body language phrases and one with a few more
Feelings Word Guide infographic of feelings broken up by the different emotion
Resources for Describing Emotions (Masterlist of links)
Degrees of 5 different emotions- infographics breaking down anxiety, sadness, happiness, love and anger into descriptive degrees
Appearance Adjectives (wayback machine link)
Feelings Adjectives (wayback machine link)
Emotions: show, don't tell

Cheat Sheets For Writing Body Language
Writers Write Body Language Cheat Sheet - general movements as well as specific upper body, lower body and eye movements and what they might mean (wayback machine link)
Emotion and Body Language writing cheat sheet (for linking actions with emotions, wayback machine link)
Body Language Cheat Sheet for Writers (body language in context)
Writing Body Language cheatsheet (and a PDF version of it)
Body Language Master List (Huge gdoc with chart showing different ways to describe different emotions broken down by body part)
Using Body Language - Site with links to numerous different traits and how to describe them via body language (also with descriptions broken down by body part and emotions and message)
The Nonverbal Dictionary (wayback machine link)

400+ Ways to Exploit Facial Expressions in Writing - an 'Emotion Beats and Physical Manifestations Cheat Sheet'

Wheel of Emotions - original and Plutchik’s version - Very useful since they're categorized by relationship and intensity.
41 Emotions as Expressed through Body Language (wayback machine link, tumblr rebloggable version)
Chart of emotions, listed by strength and feeling conveyed.
Huge gdoc with words to describe different emotions, broken down by intensity
638 Primary Personality Traits
Four Temperaments Chart - Strengths and weaknesses of four different types of people and ways to describe them each. (wayback machine link)

Describing (Fictional) Accents words for sounds, flow, dialects, and pronunciation descriptions.

Writing Characters of Different Races and Ethnicities - "Resources for writers who want to include characters who are a different race, ethnicity, or culture from their own in their work."

Resources For Describing Physical Things - a website that has descriptions (sight, sounds, smells, taste, and touch) for hundreds of different places and things ranging from abandoned mines to bridges to frozen tundra to movie theaters etc etc as well as for colors and various colors, textures and shapes.

Action/Sex scene descriptive words:
Fighting Words - "Active verbs to use in a fight scene or an otherwise violent encounter, color-coded by severity, and categorized by type of fight."
Descriptive Words for Use in Combats, Fights and Battles (wayback machine link)
Alternative words for 'walk'
Walk Alternatives broken down by action (chart)
Words to describe fights and other actions
Words and Phrases To Include In Your Sex Scenes (also a wayback machine link to a longer version with nouns, verbs and adjectives, words for the act itself, positions, euphemisms and much much more; also this info in a convenient gdoc link)
How to write a kiss scene (details, words, and descriptions to consider including)
Smut Thesaurus [18+/NSFW]
Lewd Vocabulary in Erotic Writing survey results - compiled responses to a series of questions aiming to discover preferred English lewd vocabulary choices for use by romance and erotica writers. (3.5k+ respondents from various social media sites, NSFW, PDF)
(see the randomness post for a collection of link of things to consider regarding sex and writing sex scenes)

Word/Phrase Finders/Helpers:
Definr- online dictionary that tries to guess (and provide links for) the word as you type, so very useful if you are certain how a word starts but not sure of the rest of it. (currently down for maintenance)
Visual Online Dictionary
Cliché Finder
Word Hippo (a comprehensive thesaurus for synonyms and antonyms, useful when thesaurus.com isn't spitting out what you need)
Thsrs - the "thesaurus that only gives you synonyms shorter than the word you’re looking up" (accuracy is questionable sometimes, but still can be a useful resource)
Panlexicon - an online thesaurus that gives you a cluster of different words
Related Words Website (finds words that are related to a specific word or phrase)
Describing Words Website (finds adjectives for things that you're trying to describe)
Reverse Dictionary - search for words by their definition
Tip of My Tongue (perform searches to find that word that you've been thinking about, but just can't seem to remember via its meaning, word length, letters it might have, etc)
OneLook's thesaurus /reverse dictionary (describe a concept and get back a list of words and phrases related to it)
The Phrase Finder - 2000 English idioms, phrases, and proverbs with their meanings and origins explained.
List of Contronyms (words that are their own antonyms)
synonyms for the most commonly used words of the english language
Big Huge Thesaurus (an online thesaurus and also a story plot generator)
Verbix, an English verb conjugation site will conjugate any verb for you
Idiom and Phrase dictionary
Commonly misused words/phrases/grammar errors
Qwillbot "The smart thesaurus for sentences" (in theory rewrites sentences, although not terribly differently as far as I could tell)
OED's Weird and Wonderful Words (wayback machine link)
World Wide Words "Investigating the English language across the globe" (The origins and definitions of numerous English words and phrases)
Cambridge Dictionary separate British and American dictionaries, grammar links, a thesaurus and several translation dictionaries
Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable Edited by: Susie Dent, 19th ed, 2013, online. ("new" edition, published 1898 and 3rd edition, published 1952 scanned copies at archive.org)
Brewer’s Dictionary of Modern Phrase & Fable Edited by: John Ayto and Ian Crofton, 20th and 21st Century focus, 2nd edition, 2011, online.

Words and their Timeframes (was word X used in time Y type things) and Sexual Slang:
Google Books' Ngram Viewer - search to see when/if words or phrases appear in published works (very useful to check if a term was used during a different time period) {more info on it}
Corpus of Historical American English similar to google books' ngram viewer, scours 400 million words of text from the 1810s-2000s and delivers word usage through that period (broken up by decade)
Wordsworth online app that "measure the language of historical fiction against fiction written in that era", can analyze a passage of text or two word phrase, it appears to use Google Ngram charts but limited to works from 1800-1923.
thetimelinesofslang tumblr like it says on the tin, numerous timelines of slang terms for all sorts of things including those for intercourse, penis, vagina, masturbation, sex, drugs, alcohol, religion, cops, etc.
Historical Dictionary of American Slang - allows you to search by year

Green's History of Slang - "500 years of the vulgar tongue"
Historical Slang Terms For Having Sex, From 1351 Through Today
Medieval Slang Terms and Terminology (PDF-wayback machine link)
Shakespearean Slang and Sexual Language
Elizabethan Slang and Terminology (wayback machine link)
A new dictionary of the terms ancient and modern of the canting crew (published 1699, transcribed version)
A-Z Guide to Street Slang from the 1700s
Blackguardiana: or, Dictionary Of Rogues, Bawds, Pimps, Whores, Pickpockets, Shoplifters, Mail-Robbers, Coiners, House-Breakers, Murderers, Pirates, Gipsies, Mountebanks {etc} (1793 book, link to scanned copy, text only also available. Definitions begin on p.25)
Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue late 18th century directory of slang words compiled by Francis Grose (third ed, 1796, archive.org link)
1811 Dictionary in the Vulgar Tongue which includes such wonders as BETWATTLED: Surprised, confounded, out of one's senses, COCK-A-WHOOP: Elevated, in high-spirits, transported with joy, and MUTTON-HEADED: Stupid.
Vocabulum; or, The rogue's lexicon a book of slang published 1859

"Dictionary of Americanisms: A glossary of words and phrases" - 2nd edition, 1859 by John Bartlett (contains comparisons to Britishisms of the time as well, googlebooks)
The Devil's Dictionary - satirical dictionary by Ambrose Bierce published 1906 (also at gutenberg)
DIY Chinese Penis Euphemisms (anatomical and slang terms used for penis, tumblr post)

American and British slang dictionaries at HathiTrust 53 scanned slang dictionaries, published from 1700's-mid 20th C, numerous focuses
18th Century and Regency Thieves' Cant collected from 1737, 1811 and 1819 published sources (listed by category pages or search page)
Regency Cant and Expressions - Regency Expressions Collected from the Pages of Georgette Heyer
A Glossary of Edwardian Slang

etymonline (etymology dictionary for looking up the history and derivation of any word)
Thesaurus of English - The University of Glasgow's online resource whose "purpose is to provide a detailed record of the English vocabulary from the earliest times to the present, with sufficient accompanying information that, for any given period in the past, the user should be able to ascertain the exact state of the vocabulary (that is, the ‘lexical system’) which existed at that time."
The Dictionary of American Regional English- the online version of the multi-volume reference work that documents words, phrases, and pronunciations that vary from one place to another place across the United States.

Bunny Trails: A Word History Podcast - searchable website for the podcast that 'delves into the origins of idioms and phrases to find out how they came into the English language.'

The Rules for Long S "rules for the use of long s and short s are applicable to books in English, Welsh and other languages published in England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland and other English-speaking countries during the 17th and 18th centuries."

Specific, but neat/useful:
NASA's Sci-fi space and technology terms page (wayback machine link)
Old West slang
Cab Calloway's "Hepster's Dictionary” of Harlem musician slang circa 1938 (which is also apparently the first dictionary authored by an African-American- the link has a clip of him singing some of it.)

The Phrontistery - a site dedicated to unusual, rare and half forgotten words and their history.
Luciferous Logolepsy over 9k weird and wonderful archaic words (and the very helpful gdoc spreadsheet of the list as compiled by texasdreamer01)

Online translators (not really ideal to use, but if you can't find a native speaker to ask...):
http://www.verbix.com/translate/ - translates and conjugates verbs
http://translation.imtranslator.net/translate/default.asp
https://www.bing.com/translator/
https://translate.google.com/
https://www.deepl.com/translator
https://www.linguee.com/ - translator that is also good with sayings and common phrases(free, use online or as a downloadable app)
http://translation.babylon-software.com/
Dealing with Characters in Foreign Alphabets - various onestep converters/translators/transliterators for Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, Greek, Arabic, Japanese, etc, (print and cursive where appropriate) to English (or from English to the others)
Word Dictionary - Look up Chinese, Pinyin or English, searching by Chinese characters, Mandarin pinyin or English definition

reverso - Word, expressions and idiom online translator. "Get relevant translations in context with real-life examples for millions of words and expressions" (over a dozen languages)


Research and Resource Collected Links Masterpost