[lit-ideas] Roget's Treasure
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2005 21:55:37 EST
In a message dated 1/28/2005 2:42:12 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
Synonym isn't a synonym for thesaurus. Athough a thesaurus is often used to
find synonyms,
that's not the purpose of a thesaurus.
Right. For the relevant use, the OED provides _three_ definitions of
thesaurus, below. Ultimately, it's of course, figurative: after Gk. 'treasure'.
The
OED does not seem to provide the Greek etymology, though -- I mean, where
_Greek_ 'thesauros' comes from. Notably, I wonder if a 'treasure' is
necessarily
a good thing (as in Stevenson's "Treasure Island"). What about a treasure
which is discovered but which ultimately brings doom and failure to its
finders.
Would that _still_ be a *treasure*? (_Qua_ verb, 'treasure' seems to
_implicate_ -- if not imply -- that what you treasure is something _good_. Cf.
*"I
treasure the long boring conversations with my grandfather".)
Cheers,
JL
'thesaurus', a â??treasuryâ?? or â??storehouseâ?? of knowledge, as a
dictionary,
encyclopædia, or the like.
1565 COOPER (title) Thesaurus Linguæ Romanæ et Britannicæ [etc.].
1736 AINSWORTH (title) Thesaurus Linguæ Latinæ compendiarius;
or..Dictionary of the Latin Tongue.]
1840 MILL Diss. & Disc. (1859) II. 461 A thesaurus of commonplaces for the
discussion of questions.
1862 MARSH Lect. Eng. Lang. iii. 49 In a complete thesaurus of any
language, the etymology of every word should exhibit both its philology and
its
linguistics.
1906 Westm. Gaz. 18 Dec. 2/2 This work is one of five thesauri published
under the auspices of Kang Hsi, the second Emperor of the present dynasty.
1910 Spectator 20 Aug. 279/2 A thesaurus of critical learning.
--- also:
A collection of concepts or words arranged according to sense; also (U.S.) a
dictionary of synonyms and antonyms.
1852 ROGET (title) Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases classified and
arranged [etc.].
1898 â??MARK TWAINâ?? Autobiogr. (1924) I. 172 The fact that the writer's
balance at the vocabulary bank has run short and that he is too lazy to
replenish it from the thesaurus.
1942 BERREY & VAN DEN BARK (title) The American thesaurus of slang.
1960 W. NAYLOR Silver Birch Anthol. 8, I know how you have to polish and
repolish, alter words, delete others, change sentences, consult the dictionary
and the thesaurus, before you are satisfied.
1962 U. WEINREICH in Householder & Saporta Probl. Lexicogr. 30 The grouping
of synonyms along a continuum yields a thesaurus, like Roget's.
1975 (title) Family word finder: a new thesaurus of synonyms and antonyms in
dictionary form.
--- also:
A classified list of terms, esp. key-words, in a particular field, for use
in indexing and information retrieval.
1957 H. BROWNSON in Proc. Internat. Study Conference on Classification for
Information Retrieval 100 The best answer..may be the application of a
mechanized thesaurus based on networks of related meanings.
1961 Aslib Proc. XIII. 265 We decided to..designate the analytical
compilation a â??thesaurusâ??.
1965 Revue Internat. de Documentation XXXII. 21/1 It has become commonplace
to hear of retrieval systems embodying a thesaurus. In this context a
thesarus usually means an arrangement of a vocabulary of terms in each group
being
connected in some defined way.
1974 Encycl. Brit. Macropædia IX. 572/2 The second stage should be a fully
automatic selection and matching process, preferably using a thesaurus.
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