''Roget's Thesaurus'' is a widely used English-language

thesaurus A thesaurus (plural ''thesauri'' or ''thesauruses'') or synonym dictionary is a reference work for finding synonyms and sometimes antonyms of words. They are often used by writers to help find the best word to express an idea: Synonym dictionar ...

, created in 1805 by Peter Mark Roget (1779–1869), British

physician A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...

, natural theologian and

lexicographer Lexicography is the study of lexicons, and is divided into two separate academic disciplines. It is the art of compiling dictionaries. * Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries. * Theoretica ...

History

It was released to the public on 29 April 1852. Roget was inspired by the

Utilitarian In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for all affected individuals. Although different varieties of utilitarianism admit different charac ...

teachings of Jeremy Bentham and wished to help "those who are painfully groping their way and struggling with the difficulties of composition ..this work processes to hold out a helping hand." The Karpeles Library Museum houses the original manuscript in its collection. Roget's schema of classes and their subdivisions is based on the philosophical work of

Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of ma ...

(see ), itself following a long tradition of epistemological work starting with

Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of ph ...

. Some of

Aristotle's Categories The ''Categories'' ( Greek Κατηγορίαι ''Katēgoriai''; Latin ''Categoriae'' or ''Praedicamenta'') is a text from Aristotle's '' Organon'' that enumerates all the possible kinds of things that can be the subject or the predicate of a pr ...

are included in Roget's first class "abstract relations."

Content

Roget described his thesaurus in the foreword to the first edition: ''Roget's Thesaurus'' is composed of six primary classes. Each class is composed of multiple divisions and then sections. This may be conceptualized as a tree containing over a thousand branches for individual "meaning clusters" or semantically linked words. Although these words are not strictly synonyms, they can be viewed as colours or connotations of a meaning or as a spectrum of a concept. One of the most general words is chosen to typify the spectrum as its headword, which labels the whole group.

Editions

The original edition had 15,000

word A word is a basic element of language that carries an objective or practical meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no conse ...

s and each successive edition has been larger,Roget's Thesaurus
Karcpeles Library with the most recent edition (the eighth) containing 443,000 words. The book is updated regularly and each edition is heralded as a gauge to contemporary terms; but each edition keeps true to the original classifications established by Roget. The name "Roget" is

trademark A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a type of intellectual property consisting of a recognizable sign, design, or expression that identifies products or services from a particular source and distinguishes them from othe ...

ed in parts of the world, such as the United Kingdom. By itself, it is not protected in the United States, where use of the name "Roget" in the title of a thesaurus does not necessarily indicate any relationship to Roget directly; it has come to be seen as a generic thesaurus name.

References

Bibliography

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External links