thesauri

The word thesaurus, New Latin for treasure, was coined in the early 1820s. Besides its meaning as a treasury or storehouse, it more commonly means a listing of words with similar, related, or opposite meanings. For example, a book of jargon for a specialized field; or more technically a list of subject headings and cross-references used in the filing and retrieval of documents (or indeed papers, certificates, letters, cards, records, texts, files, articles, essays and perhaps even manuscripts), film, sound recordings, machine-readable media, etc.The first example of this genre, Roget's Thesaurus, was published in 1852, having been compiled earlier, in 1805, by Peter Roget. Entries in ''Roget's Thesaurus'' are listed alphabetically and are a great resource for writers.Although including synonyms and antonyms, entries in a thesaurus should not be taken as a list of them. The entries are also designed for drawing distinctions between similar words and assisting in choosing exactly the right word. Nor does a thesaurus entry define words. That work is left to the dictionary. In Information Technology, a thesaurus represents a database or list of semantically orthogonal topical search keys. In the field of Artificial Intelligence, a thesaurus may sometimes be referred to as an !Ontology_(computer_science)ontology.Thesaurus databases, created by international standards, are generally arranged hierarchically by themes and topics. Such a thesaurus places each term in context, allowing a user to distinguish between "bureau" the office and "bureau" the furniture. A thesaurus of this type is often used as the basis of an index for online material. The Art and Architecture Thesaurus, for example, is used to index the national databases of museums, Artefacts Canada, held by the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN).

Definition - A formal definition of a thesaurus designed for indexing is:

a list of every important term (single-word or multi-word) in a given domain of knowledge; and

a set of related terms for each term in the list.Terms are the basic semantic units for conveying concepts. They are usually single-word nouns, since nouns are the most concrete part of speech. Verbs can be converted to nouns -- cleans to cleaning, reads to reading, and so on. Adjectives and adverbs, however, seldom convey any meaning useful for indexing. When a term is ambiguous, a “scope note” can be added to ensure consistency, and give direction on how to interpret the term. Naturally, not every term needs a scope note, but their presence is of considerable help in using a thesaurus correctly and reaching a correct understanding of the given field of knowledge. Term relationships are links between terms that often describe synonyms, near-synonyms, or hierarchical relations. Synonyms and near-synonyms are indicated by a Related Term (RT). The way the term Cybernetics is related to the term Computers is an example of such a relationship. Hierarchical relationships are used to indicate terms which are narrower and broader in scope. A Broader Term (BT) is a more general term, e.g. “Apparatus” is a generalization of “Computers”. Reciprocally, a Narrower Term (NT) is a more specific term, e.g. “Digital Computer” is a specialization of “Computer”. BT and NT are reciprocals; a broader term necessarily implies at least one other term which is narrower. Thesaurus designers are generally careful to ensure that BT and NT indicate class relationships, as distinguished from part-whole relationships. Some thesauri also include Use (USE) and Used For (UF) indicators when an authorized term is to be used for another, unauthorized, term; for example the entry for the authorized term "Frequency" could have the indicator "UF Pitch". Reciprocally, the entry for the unauthorized term "Pitch" would have the indicator "USE Frequency".

Examples -

Wiktionary.

''Thesaurus of English Words & Phrases'' (ed. Peter RogetP. Roget); ISBN 0062720376, see: Roget's Thesaurus.

''Webster's New World Thesaurus'' (ed. C. Laird); ISBN 0671519832

''Oxford American Desk Thesaurus'' (ed. C. Lindberg); ISBN 0195126742

''Random House Word Menu'' by Stephen Glazier; ISBN 0679400303, an unusual blend of thesaurus, dictionary, and glossary.

Specialized -

''Evaluation Thesaurus'' (by. M. Scriven); ISBN 0803943644

''Great Song Thesaurus'' (by R. Lax & F. Smith); ISBN 0195054083

''Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms'' (APA); ISBN 1557987750

''Clinician's Thesaurus'', (by E.Zuckerman); ISBN 157230569X

''Art and Architecture Thesaurus'', (Getty Institute)

External links -

University of Utrecht euromusicology.org - ''Thesaurus Musicarum Italicarum''

Lexico, Inc.'s thesaurus.com - Thesaurus.com

Cyc (Cycorp, Inc.) cyc.com - Knowledge Base

WordNet

thesaurus.reference.com - Thesaurus.com

aiksaurus.sourceforge.net - Aiksaurus

yourthesaurus.net - Your Thesaurus

phrases.org.uk - The Phrase Finder

elook.org - eLook Thesaurus

wordwebonline.com - WordWeb Online dictionary-thesaurus

visualthesaurus.com - Visual thesaurus

getty.edu - Art and Architecture Thesaurus

chin.gc.ca - Artefacts Canada

1st-dictionary.com - Free Online Dictionary Easy to use dictionary, containing over 170,000 terms and definitions, and also a large thesaurus with related words for each term

writtenhumor.com - Thesaurusizer A fun translator

woerterbuch.info - woerterbuch.info — English-German Online Dictionary/Thesaurus with over 600.000 translations

questsin.net - www.questsin.net — English Thesaurus based on Artificial Intelligence and not limited to just synonyms, homonyms and opposites but any relational set. Containing millions of entries and growing each day!

See also - wiktionary

Dictionary

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