thesaurus

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The Word of the Day for September 18 is: 

thesaurus   \thih-SOR-us\   noun
     *1 : treasury, storehouse
  2 a : a book of words or of information about a particular field or set of 
concepts; especially : a book of words and their synonyms b : a list of subject 
headings or descriptors usually with a cross-reference system for use in the 
organization of a collection of documents for reference and retrieval

Example sentence:
     The drill sergeant had a thesaurus of insults, and any recruit who stepped 
out of line became the immediate recipient of one of his zingers.

Did you know?
          In the early 19th century, archaeologists borrowed the Latin word 
“thesaurus” to denote an ancient treasury, such as that of a temple. Soon 
after, the word was metaphorically applied to a book containing a “treasury” of 
words or information about a particular field. In 1852, the English scholar 
Peter Mark Roget published his _Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases_, in 
which he listed a treasury of related words organized into numerous categories. 
This work led to the common acceptance of the term “thesaurus” for “a book of 
words and their synonyms.” Finally, during the 1950s, “thesaurus” began being 
used in the field of word processing to refer to a list of related terms used 
for indexing and retrieval.





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