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Information about Thesaurus

For the American rapper, see TheSaurus (rapper).


Thesaurus is derived from 16th century New Latin, in turn from Latin thesaurus, from ancient Greek θησαυρός 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, certificates, letters, cards, records, texts, files, articles, essays and perhaps even manuscripts), 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 writers.

Although including synonyms and antonyms, 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:
  • a list of every important term (single-word or multi-word) in a given domain of knowledge; and
  • a set of related terms for each term in the list.
Terms are the basic semantic units for conveying concepts. They are usually single-word nouns, 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 synonyms, 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

  • Wiktionary.
  • Thesaurus of English Words & Phrases (ed. P. Roget); ISBN 0-06-272037-6, see: Roget's Thesaurus.
  • The Synonym Finder (ed. J. I. Rodale); ISBN 0-87857-236-8
  • Webster's New World Thesaurus (ed. C. Laird); ISBN 0-671-51983-2
  • Oxford American Desk Thesaurus (ed. C. Lindberg); ISBN 0-19-512674-2
  • Random House Word Menu by Stephen Glazier; ISBN 0-679-40030-3, a blend of thesaurus, dictionary, and glossary.
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 English[1], which is derived from the whole HTE database.[2].

Specialized

See also

References

1. ^ [1]
2. ^ The HTE database is freely available at [2] here

External links

Winner of the 2006 Scribble Jam freestyle emcee battle. He also won the 2006 2on2 WRC (World Rap Championships) with rhyming partner, iLLmacuLate, as well as the Freestyle Olympics in '07, and dozens of other battles taking place up and down the West Coast since his emergence on to the
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New Latin}}}
Language codes
ISO 639-1: la
ISO 639-2: lat
ISO 639-3: lat New Latin (or Neo-Latin) is a post-medieval version of Latin, used approximately in the period 1600–1900.
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Latin}}} 
Official status
Official language of: Vatican City
Used for official purposes, but not spoken in everyday speech
Regulated by: Opus Fundatum Latinitas
Roman Catholic Church
Language codes
ISO 639-1: la
ISO 639-2: lat
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Ancient Greek refers to the second stage in the history of the Greek language[1] as it existed during the Archaic (9th–6th centuries BC) and Classical (5th–4th centuries BC) periods in Greece.
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treasury is any place where the currency or items of high monetary value are kept. The term was first used in Classical times to describe the votive buildings erected to house gifts to the gods, such as the Siphnian Treasury in Delphi or many similar buildings erected in Olympia,
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warehouse is a commercial building for storage of goods. Warehouses are used by manufacturers, importers, exporters, wholesalers, transport businesses, customs, etc. They are usually large plain buildings in industrial areas of cities and towns.
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Roget's Thesaurus is a widely-used English thesaurus, created by Dr. Peter Mark Roget (1779–1869) in 1805 and was released to the public on 29 April, 1852. The original edition had 15,000 words, and each new edition has been larger.
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certificate is an official document affirming some fact. For example, a birth certificate or death certificate testifies to basic facts regarding a person's birth or death.
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A letter is a written message from one person to another. The role of letters in communication has changed significantly since the 19th century. Historically, letters were the only reliable means of communication between two persons in different locations.
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The term card primarily refers to cardboard or a piece of this.

More generally, the term can refer to any of various small flat objects, typically made from heavy paper or plastic.
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File has several meanings:
  • File folder used to organize documents
  • Filing cabinet
  • Computer file
  • File (tool)
  • A nail file
  • Filing (legal)
  • File (formation) Military term for a single column of men one in front of the other.

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An essay is a piece of writing, usually from an author's personal point of view.
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manuscript is any document that is written by hand, as opposed to being printed or reproduced in some other way. The term may also be used for information that is hand-recorded in other ways than writing, for example inscriptions that are chiselled upon a hard material or scratched
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For the gay men's lifestyle magazine, see Genre (magazine).
A genre [ˈʒã:rə], (French: "kind" or "sort" from Greek: γένος (genos)) is a loose set of criteria for
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18th century - 19th century - 20th century
1820s  1830s  1840s  - 1850s -  1860s  1870s  1880s
1849 1850 1851 - 1852 - 1853 1854 1855

:
Subjects:     Archaeology - Architecture -
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18th century - 19th century - 20th century
1770s  1780s  1790s  - 1800s -  1810s  1820s  1830s
1802 1803 1804 - 1805 - 1806 1807 1808

:
Subjects:     Archaeology - Architecture -
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Peter Mark Roget IPA: /roʊˈʒeɪ/ (January 18 1779, London–September 12 1869), the son of a Swiss clergyman, studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh and became a distinguished physician and
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writer is anyone who creates a written work, although the word more usually designates those who write creatively or professionally, or those who have written in many different forms.
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For the taxonomical term, see .


Synonyms (in ancient Greek, συν ("syn") = plus and όνομα ("onoma") = name
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Antonyms, from the Greek anti ("opposite") and onoma ("name") are word pairs that are opposite in meaning, such as hot and cold, obese and skinny, and up and down.
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A dictionary is a list of words with their definitions, a list of characters with their glyphs, or a list of words with corresponding words in other languages. In a few languages, words can appear in many different forms, but only the lemma form appears as the main word or headword
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Information technology (IT), as defined by the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), is "the study, design, development, implementation, support or management of computer-based information systems, particularly software applications and computer hardware.
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In mathematics, orthogonal, as a simple adjective, not part of a longer phrase, is a generalization of perpendicular. It means at right angles, from the Greek ὀρθός orthos
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artificial intelligence (or AI) is "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions which maximizes its chances of success.
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ontology is a data model that represents a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between those concepts. It is used to reason about the objects within that domain.
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The Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) is a controlled vocabulary used for describing items of art, architecture, and material culture. The AAT contains generic terms, such as "cathedral," but no proper names, such as "Cathedral of Notre Dame.
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The Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN) is a Canadian government-supported organization that provides a networked interface to Canada's heritage, largely through the World Wide Web.
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Most general, domain knowledge is the knowledge which is valid and directly used for a pre-selected domain of human or an autonomous computer activity.

Different specialists and experts use and develop their own domain knowledge.
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Terminology is the study of terms and their use — of words and compound words that are used in specific contexts.

Terminology also denotes a more formal discipline which systematically studies the labelling or designating of concepts
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