Satisfying Verbomania
By Jesse Birnbaum
TITLE: ROGET'S INTERNATIONAL THESAURUS
EDITOR: ROBERT L. CHAPMAN
PUBLISHER: HARPERCOLLINS; 1,141 PAGES; $16.95
THE BOTTOM LINE: What's the good word? It can be found in the new fifth edition of this classic desk companion.
"Thesaurus" is a mouthful; it does not roll trippingly on the tongue. Nor do its plural forms, the highfalutin thesauri, or thesauruses, which sounds like a prehistoric creature. Thesaurus means treasury or storehouse, but nobody calls Nicholas Brady Secretary of the Thesaurus or says, "Dear, pack up your winter underwear and lock it in the thesaurus."
That is because that word is forever linked to Peter Mark Roget, the man who practically invented it. An English physician and lifelong logophile, Roget was 73 in 1852 when he published his Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, Classified and Arranged so as to Facilitate the Expression of Ideas and Assist in Literary Composition. Today Roget's International Thesaurus still hews to its promise. It is the best of its kind, a veritable arsenal of words and phrases with their synonyms, antonyms and related terms, all classified and organized to help writers and speakers say clearly what they mean.
The fourth edition of Roget's was published in 1977, but the English vocabulary has so ballooned since then that a fifth was necessary. At $16.95 for 325,000 words and phrases, the new Roget's is a bargain. Lexicographer Robert L. Chapman has revised and reordered many of Roget's 1,000 or so mainly abstract category headings (Existence, Relation, Quantity) and made them more accessible. To these he has added 31 new topics, including Fitness, Exercise, Substance Abuse, Space Travel, Computer Science and the Environment (listing more than 100 pollutants), though some of these are rearrangements and expansions derived from previous editions.
Chapman has further simplified the quest for the precise word by placing certain terms in useful vertical order, rather than running them in dense paragraphs. Thus about 150 manias, in riveting variety, are listed both by subject (railroad travel: siderodromomania; crossing bridges: gephyromania) and by name (trichorrhexomania: pinching off one's hair; typomania: writing for publication). Similarly organized is a catalog of more than 200 phobias, which only begins to suggest why psychiatrists will never lack for patients. Fear of the Pope is papaphobia; fear of failure, kakorraphiaphobia; fear of the flute, aulophobia.
Roget's also brims with the latest cliches and dirty words and an up-to-date compilation of slang and jargon; but it makes no pretense at distinguishing between the useful and the awful. Where the fourth edition labels slang as such, the fifth prefers "nonformal," an ambiguous term at best. The innocent "flaky" is nonformal -- but so is the vulgar "screw." The Black English verb "dis" (short for disrespect) is nonformal; so is "deep doo-doo," slang for predicament. What is even more puzzling is Roget's failure to draw distinctions between the "nonformal" and the downright unacceptable. The fourth cites certain words as derogatory; the fifth does not. It lists such pejoratives as "spade," "nigger," "honky," "redskin," "gook" and "slant-eye" as nonformal and altogether ignores other, similar terms.
But the function of this book is not that of a guide to good usage or a & dictionary, though it is a necessary complement to both. Despite its peculiar shortcomings, it remains a sterling reference tool and deserves a bravo!, bravissimo!, well done!, ole! (Sp), bene! (Ital), hear, hear!, aha!; hurrah!; good!, fine!, excellent!, whizzo! (Brit), great!, beautiful!, swell!, good for you!, good enough!, not bad!, now you're talking!; way to go, attaboy!, attababy!, attagirl!, attagal!, good boy!, good girl!; that's the idea!, that's the ticket!; encore!, bis!, take a bow!, three cheers!, one cheer more!, congratulations!
Also, hail!