A thesaurus is a repetitive writer's best friend, but what happens when you're looking for a specific word, the one that starts with a certain letter, or means the same things as that other word? Free word search site Tip of My Tongue makes it easy to find that word that's just out of your fuzzy mind's reach. Type in parameters on the left—letters the word starts with or contains, definitions it matches, and others—and the word matches appears instantly on the right. It's worth a bookmark for anyone who's struggled at their keyboard, only to just type in, say, "useful."

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Language education site Busuu emphasises the social side of learning a language. While Busuu has standard components such as vocabulary exercises with audio and writing units to test out your composition, the most interesting aspect is its ability to connect you with both people learning your language and native speakers of your language. You're learning Spanish and someone else is learning English? Connect through Busuu and help each other out. While Busuu may not be a substitute for the do-or-die learning of full language immersion, it has a wider range of tools and social interaction than a standalone program or book. For more chances to hone your language learning skills, check out Mango.

The Street Static weblog provides a detailed step-by-step tutorial for turning your Nintendo DS into a portable translation dictionary. The process requires a free DS application called NewDictS, then takes advantage of previously mentioned StarDict's open-source dictionaries. When you're done, your Nintendo DS can translate and define English, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, French, and more. We don't have a DS at Lifehacker HQ, so let's hear how it works for you if you give NewDictS a run.

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In a wide-ranging discussion of changes in corporate language for the BBC, writer Lucy Kellaway really hits the nail on the head with this comment:

One of the big banks is currently advertising for such workers saying "we seek passionate banking representatives to uphold our values." This is a lie. Actually what the bank is seeking is competent people to follow instructions and answer the phones.

Well, exactly. It'd be great to see job ads taking a more realistic approach, but sadly I can't see it happening any time soon. What's the worst example you've encountered? Let us know in the comments.

Find yourself facing a web page loaded with words you're a little uncertain about, whether they're another language or a bit obscure? Web tool lingro offers two bookmarklet tools that make every word on a page able to pop up a definition or translation window when clicked on. There's two flavors of bookmarkleta, quick (one tooltip at a time, no toolbar) and full-featured, and users can contribute their own definitions and translations if lingro's Creative Commons-licensed sources can't fine one. A good tool to keep tucked away for those over-wrought essays friends link you to.

Find out how to say a word you're unfamiliar with at web site Forvo. Aiming to one day have "all the words in the world pronounced"—including words in 23 languages—Forvo relies on users to generate both words in demand and the proper pronunciations of those words. So you could, for example, check out the pronunciation of different cities, and if you can't find the city whose pronunciation you're uncertain of, just head to the add a word page and put in a request for the word you want. Alternately, you can head to the pronounce page to record pronunciations of words you know. Forvo has a simple aim, but it's a great idea for harnessing a bit of social web power.

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Ever wonder how some people can get a grounding in a foreign language in the two weeks before they travel, but your own long-term efforts haven't paid off? Part of it is natural ability, but another aspect is the enforced budgeting of a crash course. Learn it lists, a free language-learning web application, gives you just 10 words each day to learn the translations of. Granted, speaking and writing a language is more than just knowing vocabulary, but making a small but committed effort every day to building your skills will likely be far more helpful than that two-language dictionary gathering dust on your bookshelf. The site requires a free registration to start using, supports 15 languages (at the moment) and can have its widgets embedded in an iGoogle page.

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Want to hone a second language skill that's gotten a tad bit rusty since you last used it in, say, your first year of college? Babbel, a social language training site, provides both collaborative lesson planning and discussion with a reminder service to keep you on track in your language learning. The site's actual instruction tools aren't up to par with a paid instructional course—you mostly learn to expand your vocabulary and pronunciation through quizzes—but the reminder functions and implied social responsibility might be just what you need to move your language learning from the "One Day" list to the "Every Day" pile. Babbel requires Flash and a free sign-up to use.

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Google has integrated translation tools into its Google Talk and GChat interfaces through the use of chat bots. To have a line translated from English to French, for instance, invite en2fr@bot.talk.google.com to chat, then simply chat the line you want to see translated. The bots use Google Translate as their back end, which, as one Blogoscoped commenter notes, has quite a few languages in rough beta, so this tool should mainly be used for casual or on-point word or line translations. For more translation tools and tips, try Wendy's guide to translation sites.