Sometimes you just need to "see" it...

Here's a website to help you visualize vocabulary: http://www.visuwords.com/
From the website:

• It's a dictionary! It's a thesaurus!
• Great for writers, journalists, students, teachers, and artists.
• The online dictionary is available wherever there’s an internet connection.
• No membership required.

Visuwords™ uses Princeton University’s WordNet, an opensource database built by University students and language researchers. Combined with a visualization tool and user interface built from a combination of modern web technologies, Visuwords™ is available as a free resource to all patrons of the web.

I think a major strong point is the color coding (nouns are blue, verbs are green, etc.)!