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A thesaurus (pl.: thesauri or thesauruses), sometimes called a synonym dictionary or dictionary of synonyms, is a reference work which arranges words by their meanings (or in simpler terms, a book where one can find different words with similar meanings to other words), [1] [2] sometimes as a hierarchy of broader and narrower terms, sometimes simply as lists of synonyms and antonyms.
The cause for the start of the project was the arrival of OpenOffice.org in 2002, which was missing the thesaurus of its parent, StarOffice, due to its licensing.. OpenThesaurus filled that gap by importing possible synonyms from a freely available German/English dictionary and refining and updating these in crowdsourced work through the use of a web ap
Roget's Thesaurus is composed of six primary classes. [5] Each class is composed of multiple divisions and then sections. This may be conceptualized as a tree containing over a thousand branches for individual "meaning clusters" or semantically linked words.
WordNet is a lexical database of semantic relations between words that links words into semantic relations including synonyms, hyponyms, and meronyms. The synonyms are grouped into synsets with short definitions and usage examples. It can thus be seen as a combination and extension of a dictionary and thesaurus.
A thesaurus or synonym dictionary lists similar or related words; these are often, but not always, synonyms. [15] The word poecilonym is a rare synonym of the word synonym. It is not entered in most major dictionaries and is a curiosity or piece of trivia for being an autological word because of its meta quality as a synonym of synonym.
The site cross-references the contents of dictionaries such as The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, the Collins English Dictionary; encyclopedias such as the Columbia Encyclopedia, the Computer Desktop Encyclopedia, the Hutchinson Encyclopedia (subscription), and Wikipedia; book publishers such as McGraw-Hill, Houghton Mifflin, HarperCollins, as well as the Acronym Finder ...
The thesaurus was originated in the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary 7th edition, where over 200 sets of synonyms were located at specific lexical entries. [5] 1st edition: Includes 2000 entries, 17000 synonyms and antonyms, 4000 definitions, 17 usage labels, 30 special subjects. Headwords derived from Oxford 3000 entries.
Foreign language learners can make use of thesaurus to find near synonyms of a word to expand their vocabulary skills and add variety to their writing. Many word processors are equipped with a basic function of thesaurus, allowing learners to change a word to another similar word with ease.