"Welcome to Thesaurus Phone!"

I worked onsite with my agency client yesterday (truth be told, I'm there most days--they are keeping me nice and busy!!). At one point during the day, the account services director came up to me and said she was looking for a synonym for "substitution," but wasn't satisfied with the choices offered by Word's thesaurus. I pondered her request for a moment before offering up "in lieu of."

"That's exactly what I was looking for!" she exclaimed, and practically skipped back to her desk.

This got me thinking: even in a world of readily-available Internet service and billions of free/cheap iPhone apps, I bet there are still people out there who would call a pay-per-use service if they could ask a live person for advice about synonyms, antonyms and the like.

This could be one of those million-dollar ideas . . . so if anybody can think of a way to implement it, let me know. I expect a cut of the action for coming up with the idea, but I don't want to be the one on the receiving end of those calls . . . I hate talking on the phone.