What is Thesaurus?

Thesaurus is a special kind of dictionaries of general or special vocabulary, which

indicate the semantic relations between lexical units; dictionary to search for any
word by its semantic connection with other words; a certain way of organizing
(arranging) words in the dictionary; a way of organizing the lexical composition that
allows you to "model the world." The semantic relations that are part of the thesaurus
can be antonyms, hyponyms, synonyms, paronyms, etc. In other words, a thesaurus is
a general vocabulary, which is actively used by person in a certain field of his
professional activity. Brunetto Latini was the first to use the term "thesaurus", which
means "treasury" in Greek, and called his systematic encyclopedia. We can say that it
is a synonym dictionary - a monolingual dictionary that provides examples of
synonyms for a particular word. Most thesauruses do not include word definitions in
addition to synonyms, and include only synonyms.
Peter Marc Roger Thesaurus
The most famous thesaurus of the New Age, which has not lost its relevance so far, is
regularly republished and translated into several languages, is "Thesaurus by Peter
Marc Roger . In this dictionary, all words and concepts describing our world were
divided into 1000 semantic categories. words are divided into six classes - abstract
concepts, space, matter, INTELECT , Volition, Affection – These classes are divided
into 24 subclasses. For example, in a space class 4 subclasses are allocated:
2.1 Space in general;
2.2. Measurement;
2.3. Form;
2.4. Movement.
Within these subclasses, smaller subclasses are distinguished, etc.,
. Roger did not aim to give a definition of words or a description of the meaning of
words, but considered it necessary to cite synonyms and antonyms, as, in his opinion,
it helps to better find a word in the dictionary and serves as a clue to memory, if it is
impossible to remember which words express a certain concept.
Roger attached an alphabetical index to the dictionary, providing each word with
information about its place in the ideographic classification. Words are provided with
numerical pointers to the relevant headings, words that occur in several headings,
highlighted in italics.
The work on the dictionary was continued by the son and grandson of P. Roger, and
subsequently the dictionary was repeatedly corrected and supplemented.
Characters of thesaurus

1. Ideographic thesaurus;
Subject or thematic connections, where the combination of words into one
group is due to the similarity or common functions of the denoted objects and
processes: household items, body parts, clothing, structures, etc.
3. Associative and verbal thesaurus
Semantic-syntactic connections, on the basis of which words are combined into
groups or pairs, are conditioned in their origin and existence by double connections:
semantic and syntactic.
There are 2 forms .
1 – Roget type, where the words were entered according to the topics
2- Synonym type - which provides examples of synonyms for a particular word. and
words are arranged alphabetically.
The main disadvantages of the Roger thesaurus are excessive schematicity when
assigning words to headings - trying to reproduce as much as possible the logical
relationship of words of the language, mainly genus-species,
Roger overlooked many other relationships that relate words, such as "space" in a
separate category, and "time"
enters the category of "abstract concepts", the word music belongs to the group
"Sound" and then - in the larger category of "matter", and painting - in the category
of "Intellect ".
That's why his thesaurus was updated.
In contrast International Thesaurus reflect the world of computers, science and
technology, fashion and postmodern culture, TV and video, new medicine and drugs,
boom in sport and leisure, the worldwide spread of modern cuisines, and the carth as
a global village. Unlike the Original Roger's Thesaurus with its 6 categories, the
International Roget's contains 15 classes.
The Bloomsbury Thesaurus uses a thematic classification of the English language,
it includes the latest terms with more than 800 categories and with hundreds of
quotations illustrating usage. 23 sections are divided into 3 groups. 1 - academic
discipline and field of knowledge. 2 - abstract ideas. 3 -human life.