Words & WritingGreek → English
Thesaurus
/θɪˈsɔːrəs/noun
A book that groups words by meaning so a writer can find alternatives.
The Greek roots
θησαυρός
thēsaurós
treasure, storehouse
Literally: “treasure store”
Follow a root:θησαυρός2 words
The story of the word
In Greek a θησαυρός is a strongroom. The small stone treasuries at Delphi, where cities kept their offerings, are θησαυροί. English used the word for any storehouse of learning until Peter Mark Roget published his in 1852 and the sense narrowed to one kind of book; Roget was a physician who had kept his word lists for forty-seven years, partly as a way of holding his own depression at bay.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
treasuretreasurytreasurer
In a sentence
Reaching for a thesaurus mid-sentence usually shows in the finished paragraph.