The Wonder Of Words
Words are wonderful things. In so many different languages around the world, they allow us to communicate with each other and to share knowledge.
Today is National Thesaurus Day, and it marks the birthday of Peter Mark Roget, who compiled Roget’s Thesaurus, and who was born on this day in 1779.
He retired from a successful career in medicine in 1840 and spent the rest of his life compiling his collection of English words and phrases, which was first published in 1852.
While dictionaries give definitions of words, a thesaurus lists synonyms, and sometimes antonyms, for words or phrases in a given language.
And they are great for expanding your vocabulary!!
There are now many versions of thesaurus available these days, but Roget’s was the first.
Silly word fact: synonym is the antonym of antonym!!
English can be a very complicated and contradictory language with words that sound similar being spelt differently and having completely different meanings, such as “there”, “their” and “they’re”!!
And then there are the words on Wordy Wizardry, which often aren’t even English at all!!!!!
My spellcheck software gives me occasional reports on my productivity, my accuracy of punctuation, grammar and spelling, etc. and the number of unique words that I have used in the given period (in other words, the size of my vocabulary).
My accuracy can be a bit dodgy at times - dashed keyboard makes so many typos 😁 - but I always use more unique words than over 93% other users of that particular spellchecker.
So they haven’t heard of Taff’s weird old words either!!! 😂
Are you a word buff? Do you like learning new words or words that mean different things in different parts of the world?
Do you enjoy writing, be it fiction, non-fiction or poetry?
And most importantly, do you possess a thesaurus or use an online one, and if so, which is your preferred one? I must admit Collins is mine, although I do also possess the Oxford Compact one and of course, Roget’s!!
All are welcome.
And please feel free to share all discussions you enjoy.
