Thesauruses

Sometimes students at the library are looking for a reference book without knowing the exact name of the sort of book they are looking for. They may ask:

Does the library have a book listing words that mean the same thing?

We may reply:

Yes, a book that groups words by their meaning is called a thesaurus.

The Thammasat University Libraries own several different types of thesauruses. Among the books of this type in our collection are the Collins Concise Thesaurus; the Chambers Paperback Thesaurus; UNBIS Thesaurus; UNICEF Thesaurus; The Marin Institute Thesaurus; The New Webster’s Thesaurus; Roget’s International Thesaurus; West’s Legal Thesaurus/Dictionary; The Oxford Colour Thesaurus; The Penguin Pocket English Thesaurus; Burton’s Legal Thesaurus; and others. There is also Thesaurus-making: Grow your Own Word-stock with advice to readers about how to build their own personal collections of words. For students and ajarns who need information from thesauruses when the library is closed, there are many thesauruses available online. They include such websites as Thesaurus.com, collinsdictionary.com, and Roget’s Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases.

What is the difference between all these thesauruses?

Thesaurus.com presents over 3 million synonyms and antonyms and readers may filter search results by relevance, word length, and complexity. Roget’s Thesaurus is very old research assistant, dating back to just after the year 1800. It was written by a British author, Peter Mark Roget, and has been revised many times since then.

For any writer of English as a foreign language for academic research and theses, it is useful to know as many words as possible that mean the same thing. As most students are aware, words that mean the same thing as each other are called synonyms. This word derives from ancient Greek terms meaning the same name. When we are writing academic research it is useful to know lots of synonyms because this gives us the option of choosing which ones we prefer to use. Often one synonym will be easier to spell, or to remember the spelling of, than another. Other synonyms may be long and complex words that we prefer not to repeat many times in a single paragraph. If we know a synonym, we can add variety and interest to our writing. So the thesaurus can be a useful instrument. For some students, this may seem a strange and possibly even funny word. They may confuse it with names of dinosaurs such as the brontosaurus or tyrannosaurus. In terms of word origins the noun thesaurus and the noun tyrannosaurus are entirely different. The word thesaurus originated in a Greek term meaning treasury, so a thesaurus means a treasury of words. Tyrannosaurus derives from different Greek words, meaning tyrant lizard.

In addition to offering us information about words with the same meaning, thesauruses provide words with opposite meanings, or antonyms. Again, this can be a useful shortcut if we are writing a research paper. If we must refer to opposites or things which are opposed to one another and cannot think of the term that we need, we may look up a choice of alternatives in a thesaurus. If a student asks:

Why should I use a thesaurus instead of a dictionary?

We may reply:

That depends on the information needed.

Recall that to look up a word in the dictionary, one must know the word, or have some idea of its spelling at least. Then a search will provide the correct spelling, definitions, advice on how to pronounce the word, word origins, and other information. If we have an idea about what we want to say but we do not know the word, then a thesaurus can help, since the thesaurus is organized according to ideas rather than by individual words. Often a writer of Thai English will think of a word in Thai and then try to find a dictionary that translates the Thai word into English. This approach does not always work, and so looking for a word while working only with English words may be the most efficient way to get results.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)