Though nearly everyone is familiar with the Roget’s Thesaurus, few people know anything about Peter Mark Roget, the eminent 19th century physician, physiology expert, mathematician, inventor, writer, editor and chess whiz—and what motivated him to write his immortal book.
People tend to think of a thesaurus as a collection of synonyms and antonyms, but Roget’s is essentially a reverse dictionary. With a dictionary, the user looks up a word to find its meaning. With Roget’s, the user starts with an idea and then keeps flipping through the book until he finds the word that best expresses it. The organization of the book reflects the unique intelligence of the polymath that created it.
Obsessed with words ever since he began studying Latin as a schoolboy, Roget completed a first draft of the Thesaurus (the Latin word for “treasure” or “treasury”) in 1805, when he was just 26. Then working as a physician in Manchester, Roget managed to crank out this string of word lists in less than a year.
It wasn't until his retirement from science in 1848 at the age of 69, that Roget took on the challenge of finishing the Thesaurus. The still spry Roget worked nonstop for nearly four years to prepare the book for publication. He would continue to tinker with his masterpiece until his death at the age of ninety in 1869, having watched over the publication of some 28 editions.
"A truck loaded with thousands of copies of Roget's Thesaurus crashed yesterday losing its entire load. Witnesses were stunned, startled, aghast, taken aback, stupefied, confused, shocked, rattles, paralyzed, dazed, bewildered, mixed up, surprised, awed, dumbfounded, nonplussed, flabbergasted, astounded, amazed, confounded, astonished, overwhelmed, horrified, numbed, speechless, and perplexed." ~ Al Lampkin
Fun with words
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