What's Another Word for Thesaurus?
That was a joke that Steven Wright used to tell. I guess if I had given it any thought, I could have found out that there were several answers to that question. It makes it less funny, but I learned something today, courtesy of the Merriam-Webster Word of the Day e-mail:
thesaurus \thih-SOR-us\ noun
- treasury, storehouse
- a book of words or of information about a particular field or set of concepts; especially : a book of words and their synonyms
- a list of subject headings or descriptors usually with a cross-reference system for use in the organization of a collection of documents for reference and retrieval
Example sentence: The drill sergeant had a thesaurus of insults, and any recruit who stepped out of line became the immediate recipient of one of his zingers.
Did you know? In the early 19th century, archaeologists borrowed the Latin word "thesaurus" to denote an ancient treasury, such as that of a temple. Soon after, the word was metaphorically applied to a book containing a "treasury" of words or information about a particular field. In 1852, the English scholar Peter Mark Roget published his Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, in which he listed a treasury of related words organized into numerous categories. This work led to the common acceptance of the term "thesaurus" for "a book of words and their synonyms." Finally, during the 1950s, "thesaurus" began being used in the field of word processing to refer to a list of related terms used for indexing and retrieval.
Well, there you go.