What are your most useful tools for understanding linguistics?

[Margaret Cavendish]

Hi everyone. If you don't' want to read about my personal situation, you can just skip to the last two lines on this post.

I am working on a historical translation of The Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish. I am not a teacher or trained in English beyond 12th grade, but I have always had a love for learning and this will be my second historical translation. Been working as a writer for years and I'm currently in school for stenographic court reporting, so I do have a passion for language.

I am wondering what tools I may be missing out on, that I could be utilizing instead. I am especially interested in 17th century English (obviously).

Currently I use Wiktionary a lot, but it does not always have enough examples and sometimes is incomplete. Etymology.com is okay. I do a lot of referencing old dictionaries and published papers to understand things sometimes. However sometimes its not enough. So here I am.

If you have any useful tools you would like to share, feel free to share them here!

Thank you in advance for your participation in this thread. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day/night