A Word By Any Other Name

July 16, 2015 / Melody Smith / Comments Off on A Word By Any Other Name

The Beatles just may cringe a little if they were still together. A humorous, tongue-in-cheek parody based on a song of theirs (I Am the Walrus) was brought to our attention in a video titled, “The Chaser’s War on Everything: I am thesaurus.” As in most news stories, the real entertainment is in the comment section.

Dr. Peter Mark Roget is considered to be the inventor of the thesaurus (or at least one of its pioneers). This is the man who compiled the first “Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases.” He started writing it in 1805 but didn’t have it published until much later, in 1852. The full title of the first edition was Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, Classified and Arranged so as to Facilitate the Expression of Ideas.

Most people think of Roget’s thesaurus as a simple list of words and their synonyms. This is understandable, as some of the more recent synonymies that include “thesaurus” in their titles really are just strictly alphabetical lists of words, annotated with some synonyms.

Melody K. Smith

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Melody Smith

Melody K. Smith has provided organizational, social media and digital communication services to a large non-profit for the past twenty years. Prior to that she championed employee engagement and communications in the healthcare field. She holds a Bachelors degree in Marketing. When not wrangling and writing TaxoDiary content for your reading pleasure, Melody writes fiction, rescues dogs and throws legendary dinner parties.