Wings for Flight

"This is at least a curious book," exclaimed the London Critic, but that was about as far as the reviewer would go. The book in question .was a new sort of dictionary, compiled by a local doctor named Peter Mark Roget. As far as the Critic could see in 1852, Roget's Thesaurus would never prove to be really "useful."

The reviewer soon learned how wrong he was. The doctor went right on producing editions of his Thesaurus, and he could scarcely keep up with the demand. By 1869 he had edited 28 editions, was working on the 29th the night before he died. Last week, as Britain celebrated the 100th anniversary of the first publication date, the Thesaurus had passed the 80-edition mark--a standard piece of equipment for three generations of professors and poets, statesmen and scholars, and crossword puzzle fans.

Chess & Geology. Dr. Roget did not start out in life to be one of Britain's grand masters of words. The son of a French Protestant minister, he was actually a scientific prodigy. At 12 he was teaching himself advanced mathematics; at 14 he entered the University of Edinburgh; at 19 he graduated as a full-fledged M.D. Eventually he became the nation's leading authority on physiology and anatomy.

He was a slim, sociable gentleman, whose feverish energy left his London friends panting. He founded the Northern Dispensary, helped found the University of London and the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. He was chief physician to the Spanish embassy and the Milbank penitentiary, and when he lectured at the London Institution, students and ladies of fashion alike flocked to hear him.

He was the government's expert on the London water works; he invented a slide rule, a pocket chessboard, and worked on a computing machine. He wrote for the Britannica and other encyclopedias on an imposing range of subjects -- Age, Apiaries, Arsenic, Asphyxia, Electricity, Electrodynamics, Galvanism, Phrenology, Solid Geometry, and Syncope. He became a collector of chess problems, dabbled in mnemonics, astronomy, entomology, geography, and geology. In his spare time he also took up botany, and it was botany that led him to compile the Thesaurus.

"Beard the Lion ..." It all began with Roget's habit of listing words according to the way botanists classify plants and their families. But when he finally retired from practice in 1840, he decided to extend his listings further. To Roget, the abuse of language was becoming a menace. "A misapplied or misapprehended term," said he, "is sufficient to give rise to ... interminable disputes; a misnomer has turned the tide of popular opinion; a verbal sophism has decided a party question; an artful watchword, thrown among combustible materials, has kindled the flame of deadly warfare . . ." Roget hoped not only to end the menace but to give the speech of ordinary men "wings for flight.''

His method was to break the language down into six main classes (abstract relations, space, matter, intellect, volition, affections). Then under each class he listed the pertinent one-word topics, following these with a rich array of synonyms, colloquialisms and comparisons. The topic courage, for instance, involved for him everything from audacity to spunk, Perseus to gamecock, to "beard the lion in his den." Roget also included appropriate quotations: e.g., "Every dog is a lion at home" . . . "The valiant never taste of death but once."

Today, Roget's grandson carries on the work, adding new words and phrases sent in by correspondents all over the world. After 100 years, the Thesaurus has not ended the menace Roget saw. But it has sent thousands of users to searching for the right word, has persuaded thousands more to spread their "wings for flight."

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