As it applies to @Jeruba‘s response, I have a “word finder” book (hardcover and paper) – whose title ironically escapes my memory right now – that is more than a thesaurus and less than a dictionary.
It’s a book that, like a thesaurus, gives synonyms (and antonyms and homonyms, too), but also categorizes words. So, for example, if I were to look up the word “squad” there, I might find references to military personnel groupings (regiment, brigade, platoon, and squadron, of course, etc.) as well as sports teams, business groupings and other categories for the word “squad”, and appropriate terms for the various contexts of the word.
So when I “give up” to go to that book I can go on whole daisy chains of word lookups as word leads on to word, and so on. I only avoid going to that book because I know that I’ll be wandering around in it for hours by choice after I start.
But in general I also agree with @Jeruba on the idea of “get it back; I know that it’s in there”. However, on a word such as the example given, though I recognize “fusili” and I know that I’ve seen it before, it’s not part of my normal lexicon, so I would not have even thought to remember it. A nautical or construction term… yeah, that I might beat myself up for not calling to mind without external aid.