Roget’s was a two-for-one: it put both a book of synonyms and a topic dictionary (a compendium of thematically arranged concepts) under one cover.īorrowing the principles of zoological classification, Roget arranged all knowledge-not just words.

Roget’s Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases Classified and Arranged so to Assist in Literary Composition clearly bore the stamp of its creator. He would continue to tinker with his masterpiece until his death at the age of ninety in 1869, having watched over the publication of some 28 editions. The still spry Roget worked nonstop for nearly four years to prepare the book for publication. However, it was not until his retirement from science in 1848, at the age of 69, that Roget took on the challenge of finishing the Thesaurus. Then working as a physician in Manchester, Roget managed to crank out this string of word lists in less than a year. Obsessed with words ever since he began studying Latin as a schoolboy, Roget completed a first draft of the Thesaurus (the Latin word for “treasure” or “treasury”) in 1805, when he was just 26.

The organization of the book reflects the unique intelligence of the polymath that created it. With Roget’s, the user start with an idea and then keeps flipping through the book until he finds the word that best expresses it. With a dictionary, the user looks up a word to find its meaning.

But Roget’s is essentially a reverse dictionary. We tend to think of a thesaurus as a collection of synonyms and antonyms. The 1852 Thesaurus divvied 1,000 concepts into six Linnaean classifications.

What is a thesaurus