Roget's Thesaurus

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About a month ago my mum found a battered Roget’s Thesaurus in a charity shop. Or rather, instead of finding, she perhaps unearthed, happened upon, came across or brought to light this great big tome of a book with thick pages and a mint jacket.  There are plenty of phrases that could convey her sniffing out of interesting bargains, several more appropriate than others. All can be found under category 487: 'Discovery', and running through the nouns, verbs, colloquialisms and shades of meaning held within this one grouping confirms how invaluable a book it is.

My mum bought it, remembering an identical copy from her seventies' childhood. One of the few items transported from house to house as she moved, Roget became a dependable addition to each new setting. Her late mother (my dimly remembered grandmother) would, I'm told, sit, read and revel. New words were hooked and held up like flickering, silver-scaled fish. It was a text to consult whenever the right word was needed, or a new one pursued to colour and enhance vocabulary. That same cover still proudly proclaims in oxblood-hue lettering: “expand, enrich and invigorate your speech and writing with this comprehensive treasury of almost 250,000 words and phrases, grouped by ideas.”

There's something deeply nourishing in flicking through this thesaurus that treats words with such respect. The accumulation of words and phrases is both practical and delectable.  In among the synonyms and antonyms there are quotes ranging from Shakespeare to The Bible to Tennyson. Looking up something such as ‘Fashion’ brings the reader to an almost poem-like list: “spruceness, nattiness, neatness, trimness, sleekness, dapperness, jauntiness, sharpness, spiffiness, classiness, niftiness [all slang].” Every possible meaning is laid out; numbered neatly. Ten minutes of idle exploration is enough to kindle the imagination for days.

In the introduction to my edition, Ivor Brown discusses the frustration triggered by the “lack of the best word and sometimes even of a barely sufficient one.” Sometimes I find myself returning to the same phrases again and again, hemmed in by the confines of the familiar. Having a thesaurus allows one to step over this limitation and push out at the boundaries of language. It is a tool; picked up and used to shape a sentence or to clarify a theme.

Brown’s introduction reminds me of one of William Hazlitt’s most remarkable essays. In ‘On Familiar Style’ he writes that one should not use “the first word that offers, but the best in common use”; going on later to observe that, “It is not pomp or pretension, but the adaptation of expression to the idea, that clenches a writer’s meaning: - as it is not the size or glossiness of the materials, but their being fitted each to their place, that gives strength to the arch.” Although it may be said that luxuriating in words for words’ sake would have displeased Hazlitt (he dismissed “florid style” as a “spangled veil to conceal the want” of real ideas), I can identify with that need to find exactly the right one. It's like whittling a shape until it slots into the space that's waiting for it. No other will do. It could perhaps be jammed in, but then it would stick out awkwardly rather than being seamless.

When typing on my laptop, the thesaurus window is always open. I use it to look up alternatives or locate words that I can’t quite bring to mind. But this only goes so far. The results can feel restricted, as though more lies beyond. Meanings are broken down into short, useful lists. The less obvious possibilities will not be found onscreen, but here, in my huge block of a book with a sellotaped jacket. It smells of wooden floorboards, antique shops, sun-bleached fabric and warm forgetting. But reading it offers the opposite: remembering words, expanding their meanings. It's a book of knowledge and nuance. Long may its pages continue to elevate and inspire.  

Talking of writing and words, I have been very fortunate recently. Firstly, an article of mine was published on the Guardian Comment is Free, discussing the devastating factory collapse in Bangladesh & the ethics of fashion. It can be seen here. 
I was also delighted to find out that I had won the 2013 Hippocrates Prize for Young Poets. More on that soon...

To accessorize Roget I wore a mint green vintage 60s minidress bought from Beyond Retro when I was 13. It was one of the first items I featured on my blog, and thus (to me) exemplifies clothing longevity. I also have on a black vintage St Michael velvet blazer, satin heels from a charity shop and a bag made locally from recycled materials. 
Thought that a Gif was needed to capture the full effect of me being precarious in very high heels. 

Roget's Thesaurus 2013-05-22T12:14:00-07:00 Rating: 4.5 Diposkan Oleh: Unknown