Information AboutThesaurus |
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For the American rapper, see TheSaurus (rapper) . The word thesaurus is derived from 16th century New Latin , in turn from Latin ''thesaurus'', from Ancient Greek '''' ''thesauros'', "store-house", "treasury". Besides its meaning as a Treasury or Storehouse , it more commonly means a listing of words with similar, related, or opposite meanings (this new meaning of ''thesaurus'' dates back to '' Roget's Thesaurus ''). 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, Certificate s, Letter s, Card s, records, texts, File s, articles, Essay s and perhaps even Manuscript s), 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 not listed alphabetically but conceptually and are a great resource for Writer s. Although including Synonym s and Antonym s, 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 . 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:
Terms are the basic semantic units for conveying Concept s. They are usually single-word Noun s, 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 Synonym s, 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
An important thesaurus project of recent years is the Historical Thesaurus Of English (HTE), currently in progress at the University Of Glasgow . The HTE, which started in 1964, will be a complete database of all the words in the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary , arranged by semantic field and date. In this way, the HTE arranges the whole vocabulary of English from the earliest written records (in Anglo-Saxon ) to the present alongside types and dates of use. As a historical thesaurus, it will be the first for any of the world's languages. The HTE project has already produced the Thesaurus of Old Englishhttp://www.oenewsletter.org/OEN/reports.php/kay38_3/, which is derived from the whole HTE database.The HTE database is freely available at http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/SESLL/EngLang/thesaur/toe1.htm here. Specialized
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