Happy Birthday, Peter Mark
Peter Mark Roget was born today in 1779, in London.
His Thesaurus has been an invaluable tool for many writers - a work of genius. More people need lessons in how to use it, but that's not his fault. For one thing, he didn't intend it to be a dictionary of synonyms, but rather a classification of English's lexicon - "of the words it contains and of the idiomatic combinations peculiar to it, arranged, not in alphabetical order as they are in a dictionary, but according to the ideas which they express."
(image from loltheorists)
1 Comments:
-
At 6:27 PM, January 18, 2009
Anonymous had this to say...
-
-
<-- Older Post ^ Home Newer Post -->I use a dictionary-style Thesaurus now, but I still have the old well-thumbed hardcover edition with the original format, plus an equally worn 1947 Webster's dictionary. Both were on the shelf at home when I was a kid. I'm thankful to my folks for two things - insisting I look up every word I ever questioned (not to mention creating the environment that encouraged questioning words in the first place!) and for insisting I take Latin for my high school language requirement instead of one of the other choices.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]