January 18, 2022 is National Thesaurus Day.
When you’re looking for that perfect word to convey your thought, or don’t want to repeat the same word over and over again, where do you go? The thesaurus, of course!
When the Thesaurus was completed in 1852, it contained 15,000 words. The book’s full original title was “Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases Classified and Arranged so as to Facilitate the Expression of Ideas and Assist in Literary Composition.”
The Thesaurus has never been out of print since its first publication.
Who Do We Thank?
Peter Mark Roget (1770-1869) was an English physician, philologist and the inventor 0f ‘Roget’s Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases’.
Roget worked on the thesaurus after his retirement from medicine. As a young physician, he published works on tuberculosis and on the effects of nitrous oxide, then used as an anesthetic. After initially practicing in Bristol and Manchester, he moved to London and continued to lecture on medical topics.
Slide Rules and Kaleidoscope
You may be interested in knowing that Roget made some other note worthy contributions. He invented a slide rule to calculate the roots and powers of numbers which formed the basis of slide rules. Until the early 1970s, slide rules were widely used in schools and colleges. (I still have mine even though I no longer remember how to use it).
He also had a keen interest in optics and wrote a paper suggesting the methods to improve the kaleidoscope. Now improving the kaleidoscope has been a delight for many generations.
Ways to Celebrate Thesaurus Day
Play a game of “synonym password”
Pair up with a friend to see if you can stump each other on this game show variation. Make a stack of cards with words on them, and on each turn, give your partner up to three synonyms for the word on the card. Try to get them to figure out the original word. For instance, for a card with “party” on it, you could say “celebration,” “shindig,” or “festivity.”
Rewrite a famous poem or story.
Have a little fun switching out the words of famous works and see if you can make them better! Take Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven,” for instance. “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,” could turn into “Once upon a boring night, while I thought, frail and fatigued.”
Flip through a thesaurus, for old time’s sake.
These days, we mostly use the an online thesaurus, but paging through a book can lead you to many new words! Spend some time looking up favorites, you know, your darlings, number ones, idols, beloveds, dears, and faves.