Sometimes it’s not enough to just possess a dictionary, you may need a thesaurus. What is a thesaurus and how does it work?

A thesaurus is a reference work that lists a group of words together that are similar in meaning that contains synonyms, or words that have identical or similar meaning and antonyms, or words that deals with opposites. Unlike a dictionary, which basically contains the definitions and pronouncements of words, thesauruses breaks them down, as it were, so that the reader can get more of a understanding of them. In effect, it gives the reader a more broader understanding of a word.

There are literally thousands of thesauruses; the largest is the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, which contains more than 920,000 words. The history of the thesaurus dates back to the 4th century, when the Amarakosha, a thesaurus written in the Sanskrit language, was devised. But the thesaurus as most people know it today was first compiled in 1805 when Peter Mark Roget wrote the first modern English thesaurus, which took nearly fifty years to publish.

But how exactly does a thesaurus work? Let’s use the word “Pedantic”, for example. The word means basically a person that is a stickler for rules and regulations. With a thesaurus, the word can be broadened as “bookish”, “precise”, “egotistical” and a “nitpicker”.

See how easy it is? Thesauruses helps to find a much clearer and definitive way to explain the meaning of a word. Today it is more easier than ever to find a thesaurus. You can search online for thesaurus online, free thesaurus or free thesaurus online as well as the many other thesauruses that available for online study.

Why not find out more about it now?