Today is Thesaurus Day

Now that anyone can easily search online for a word's definition or synonym, I wonder if people appreciate the thesaurus in the same way that we did in pre-Internet times.

 I can say that I'm still a fan. Although I use thesaurus.com when I'm on the go, I keep print copies of Roget's Thesaurus and the Oxford Concise Thesaurus on hand in my home office. 

 Browsing through a thesaurus is rewarding, because you trip across unexpected gems. Not unlike how browsing in a bookstore helps you discover unexpected finds compared to the in-and-out efficiency of ordering a book online. 

 Today, I learned that January 18 marks Thesaurus Day. The date is no accident; Thesaurus Day coincides with the anniversary of Peter Mark Roget's birth in 1779. 

 Mental Floss published Ten Fascinating Facts about the Thesaurus, which includes the word's origin: Greek for treasure. How fitting.

 In the past, I associated January 18 with A.A. Milne's birthday (1882). Now, I have two writing-related reasons to mark the day. 

 Happy Thesaurus Day and Creator-of-Pooh Day.

Reference book spines, including Roget's Thesaurus and the Oxford Concise Thesaurus, on Plum Copy's book shelf


Location: Ottawa, ON, Canada

Comments

Post a Comment

Readers' faves

Any excuse to celebrate (my guest post on 1000 Awesome Friends)

Image
I originally posted the rambling below as my first guest blog entry on 1000AwesomeFriends.org , but I'm also re-posting the text here, where it is searchable. (I've written so many posts that the only way I can only avoid repeats by searching my own site to see if I've written about a topic or simply thought about writing about that subject.) Has your birthday come and gone? Are there no statutory holidays on your horizon? There’s no need to wait for a day off from school or work to let loose and shake things up a bit. Just go ahead, pick a festivity from another nation or culture, then find your own way to mark that occasion. As it is, people around the world wear shamrocks, listen to Irish tunes, and eat and drink green food colouring on March 17th. Do we all have ties to Ireland? No, but that doesn’t stop us from whooping it up on St. Patrick’s Day. It’s easy to find something to celebrate. Take today for example, it’s Cinco de Mayo. That party is no longer just
Read more

Retweets for mental health

Image
In five-cent increments, the twitterverse buzzed with tweets that will make millions of dollars flow to support mental health.  From a social-media metrics perspective, the #BellLetsTalk (French version #BellCause) garnered impressive reach, which rivalled #SOTU for President Obama's State of the Union address. Even by adding the long form (#stateoftheunion), as of this morning there was only a five-million gap between the BellLetsTalk hashtag and the State of the Union hashtags. Impressive. How did it happen? Collective thanks to major leaguers, mobile technology, multitudes of do-gooders and an annual marketing campaign for all the activity on January 28, 2014.  Entertainers like William Shatner, Jann Arden and Ellen Degeneres encouraged their fans to retweet the #BellLetsTalk messages about mental health. Thousands upon thousands of followers responded. Millions in all. Who else helped the cause? Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield. Olympian Clara Hughes. NHL franchis
Read more

Ironing boards with quiet mechanisms

Image
Have you ever used an ironing board with a silent opening mechanism? All the ironing boards I've owned or borrowed have shrieked as though cats were being tortured by the fires of Hell. I can imagine that an ironing board with a quiet mechanism, which doesn't wake up people four houses away, would be AWESOME!
Read more