'Roget's International Thesaurus'

Book Review - by Rehan Qayoom 

The word 'Thesaurus' comes from Greek, meaning: a treasury or storehouse.  And a treasury of words is always handy in any situation.  Indeed the most perfervid of enthusiasts with a passion for words like myself, treasure a jittery delight in reading a thesaurus or dictionary, as if it were a novel about words instead of a source of reference. Arthur Scargill wrote that his father read the dictionary every day: 'He says your life depends on your power to master words.'

Perhaps this obsession for words can best be illustrated in the case of poets. W.H Auden (who used volume I of the Oxford English Dictionary as a chair cushion at his dinner table), Plath and other poets are known to have ransacked their thesauruses and dictionaries. Not for ideas, but for words that were, so to speak, on their tips of their minds.

The writer Auden expressed it: 'How can I know what I think till I see what I say? A poet writes 'the chestnut's comfortable root', and then changes this to 'the chestnut's customary root'. In this alteration, there is no question of replacing one emotion by another, or of strengthening an emotion, but of discovering what the emotion is. The emotion is unchanged, but waiting to be identified, like a telephone number one can't remember. '8357. No that's not it. 8557, 8457, no, it's on the tip of my tongue, wait a moment, I've got it, 8657. That's it."

'Rogets International Thesaurus' is the definitive thesaurus. Rather than listing thousands of words alphabetically, it groups related terms together into a neat, conceptual framework which helps the writer by stimulating thought, organizing ideas and encouraging clearer and more effective writing. The latest edition covers more than three hundred thousand words, organized into more than one thousand easy-search categories. Even the latest slang words are included. 

A comprehensive, yet well-designed layout edition; a must for all aspiring writers.