Today is a celebration of Peter Mark Roget’s creation. Today — 18th January — is ‘National Thesaurus Day!’ It’s also Roget’s birthday.

Apparently, Roget started his book in 1848 and finished it in 1852 with 15,000 words.

Its full, original title was “Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases Classified and Arranged so as to Facilitate the Expression of Ideas and Assist in Literary Composition.”

Luckily, the abbreviation (and synonym) for that title is: ‘thesaurus’. The word itself derives from the Greek for treasure. How appropriate!

Although people tend to think of themselves as either ‘word nerds’ or ‘number nerds’, in fact, it was the same Roget who invented the log-log slide rule to more easily calculate roots and exponents of numbers.

I’m happy to celebrate the thesaurus:

Yay! Woo-hoo! Hurray! Um… **checks thesaurus** — Whoopee! Egad! Yippee!!!

Read more © Susan Alison 2022