Ross Clark
2024-10-22 10:08:40 UTC
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Permalinkfields. You start with a word, look up its semantic category (a nested
hierarchy with labels like "1.2.23.14"), look that up and you will find
your word together with all its near-synonyms or closely related (by
meaning) words. The classic task for Roget is "I want a word that means
something like 'insist', but a little different..." or "I don't want to
keep on using 'insist' -- how about a word that means roughly the same,
for variety?"
The OED Historical Thesaurus adds a historical dimension to this.
Starting in the same way, you find a semantic point or field you're
interested in, and it gives you all the words that have been used there,
right back to Old English. You can see how the vocabulary for that
particular area has changed over the centuries.
I have to admit: I bought myself a copy of OEDHT a couple of years ago,
on impulse, for probably more money than was wise. It's two great hefty
volumes, and it's on my bookshelf now, but I have used it very little.
I'm not at home with the semantic categories, and the historical
information is extremely compressed, in small print with numerous
abbreviations. Maybe I just need an online tutorial in how to use it.
Actually the whole thing is available online, alongside OED Online,
which I use all the time; but if I learned to use the online thesaurus,
I would realize I had wasted my money on the hard copy....
The sort of question which I have occasionally thought OEDHT might be
able to answer is: I'm thinking about a modern English word which seems
pretty basic, but I know it only goes back to the 17th century, or to
Middle English. The concept is not new, so what words did they have for
it before the one we know today?
Crystal says it's the first historical thesaurus for any language. The
idea was suggested to the Philological Society by Michael Samuels in
1965, and 44 years later, there it was.