Introduction

Preface   Index   Explanatory Notes

Evolution of the Thesaurus

With its intricate interweaving of strands of Celtic, earlier Roman and later ecclesiastical Latin, northern and western Germanic tongues, and, through Norman-French, the whole body of Romance languages, it is scarcely surprising that English is a language peculiarly rich in synonyms. Equally, it is scarcely strange that with so much to work with, users of this language have long been interested in synonyms as an element both in precision and in elegance of expression. Though the word  synonym had certainly been in use at least a century earlier, its first appearance with essentially its modern meaning seems to be that in the dedicatory epistle of John Palsgrave's translation of the Latin  Comedye of Acolasius (1540) in which he castigates self-important and incompetent masters who

... do oppress and overlaye the tender wyttes, the whiche they wold so fayne further, with their multitude of sondry interpretations, confusedly by them uttered. So that fynally theyr yong scholers,... be forced to falle a glosynge... and as their chyldyshe judgement dothe for the time serve them, of dyvers englishe werdes in our tongue beinge synonymes... they chuse moste commonly the very worste, and therewith scryble the bokes of theyr latyne auctours.

To pass from awareness of synonyms as a usage problem to organized consideration of them as an organic factor in rhetorical excellence is no very long stride. This is demonstrated by Henry Cockeram's  English Dictionarie (1623). This engaging little work, though the first English dictionary in name, comes closer in some respects to being a thesaurus in fact. Its first book purports to define difficult words, but a good half of the ``definitions'' are simple lists of equivalents (as at  condigne -  worthy, due, deserved; at  luxurie -  lecherie, riotousnesse; at  sordid -  base, filthy). The second book contains in its author's words

The vulgar words, which whensoever any desirous of a more curious explanation by a more refined and elegant speech shall looke into, he shall there receive the exact and ample word to express the same.

Entries such as ``to Behead one,  Decollate, Obtruncate'', ``to put Over,  Adiourne, Prorogue, Procrastine'', ``Youth,  Puerilitie, Infancie, Adolescentie, Juvenilitie, Minoritie'' are typical of this section. At some stretch of credibility one might suggest that Cockeram here anticipated Roget in assembling word lists matched to ideas rather than to other words.

After this vigorous beginning, English synonymy languished until the eighteenth century. It then was given a new impetus by the appearance in 1719 of the Abbe¬ Gabriel Girard's book of discriminative synonymies of the French language. This was translated and adapted to English use, apparently by John Trusler, who brought out a book  The Distinction between Words esteemed Synonymous in the English Language (1766) which is patently based on Girard and which unquestionably influenced the later discriminative synonymies of Mrs. Piozzi (1794) and George Crabb (1816). Thus, the discriminative or descriptive or prescriptive synonymy became established as an accepted literary and didactic form by the early years of the nineteenth century.

Slower in blooming in spite of its head start in Cockeram's work was the essentially mnemonic approach to synonymy, the Thesaurus of modern usage. The first book that undertook the orderly presentation of synonyms as a primary function was William Perry's  Synonymous, Etymological, and Pronouncing English Dictionary (1805). With respect to the assembling of synonyms in readily available lists the author notes:

It is a matter of no small astonishment that a work of this kind, one among thedesiderata  of literature, should have been so long neglected. Every person accustomed to write, whether on private concerns, or for public instruction, must have felt the want of such an assistant, not only to guard him against the tiresome repetition of the same words, but to enable him to select terms to express his ideas with greater clearness and precision.

This first ``thesaurus'', produced nearly half a century before Peter Mark Roget gave that word its current meaning, offers a clear and concise explication of the purpose of such a volume as distinguished from the discriminative synonymy, which seeks to impose to varying degrees an author's notions of appropriateness, propriety, and correctitude on a user.

During succeeding years several synonym-listing books appeared, some of greater and some of less worth and degree of popular appeal. Formally organized word-finding lists became a feature of the general dictionary with the publication in 1847 under the editorship of Chauncey A. Goodrich of the royal octavo abridgment of Noah Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language (1828). Finally, with the publication of Peter Mark Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases in 1852, a new force entered the field.

This last was and remains a unique work. The product of nearly fifty years of collecting and testing to meet the author's own needs, it is organized primarily in terms of words related to concepts. For the scholarly user it opens a very real treasury of language, but Roget's impression, expressed in his introduction, that the user

scarcely ever need engage in any critical or elaborate study of the subtile distinctions existing between synonymous terms; for if the materials set before him be sufficiently abundant, an instinctive tact will rarely fail to lead him to the proper choice

is probably far too optimistic with regard to the person who needs guidance most  -  the person of average or limited vocabulary. In fact, Barnas Sears, editor of the first American edition of  The Thesaurus of English Words (1854) makes the point in his ``Editor's Preface'' that

apprehending that many who may consult this work would regard the plan of the author for the distribution of his topics as too obscure for ordinary reference, the editor has caused the index to be greatly enlarged.

It has long been recognized that Roget is far more often recommended by instructors than it is used by students. Nonetheless, The Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases is the only word-finding book to remain viable in various editions for well over a century, and one cannot help feeling that in spite of its complexity and elaborate structural plan the sheer wealth of relevant material that it offers a sophisticated user is the explanation of its survival.

Understandably enough, most thesaurists of the post-Roget period have sought an approach that would combine the wealth of material available in Roget's work with the indubitably simpler alphabetical organization of a dictionary. While differing levels of success have been attained, the underlying problem  -  that a dictionary dealing in synonyms and antonyms of specific words cannot honestly cover the same ground as a thesaurus devoted to the presentation of all pertinent terms about specific concepts  - can scarcely be said to have been solved in an entirely satisfactory manner. It is the hope and belief of the editors of Webster's Collegiate Thesaurus that, by pinpointing the exact segment of meaning in which word groups are synonymous and by supplementing synonym and antonym lists in this book with lists of related and contrasted words and of pertinent idiomatic equivalents, they have gone far toward solving the problem without doing violence to the basic concepts of  synonym and antonym.

The Synonym

The early lexicographers had a clear and precise awareness of the concept  synonym.  Thus, Johnson enters in his  Dictionary of the English Language (1755) ``SYNONYMA ... Names which signify the same thing,'' George Mason in his  Supplement to Johnson's English Dictionary (1803) adds ``SYNONYME ... A word of the same meaning as some other word'' (an entry taken over verbatim in Todd's 1818 revision of  Johnson's English Dictionary), and Webster (1828) includes ``SYNONYM ... a name, noun or other word having the same signification as another is its  synonym. Two words containing the same idea are  synonyms.'' Similarly, the eighteenth century discriminative synonymists implicitly followed the lead of Abbe¬ Girard, whose title  La Justesse de la langue francÀoise ou les diffe¬rentes significations des mots qui passent pour e¦tre synonymes makes it clear that he was discriminating ``words reputed to be synonyms'' rather than words that are precisely such. His imitator Trusler refers in like manner to ``Words esteemed Synonymous in the English Language,'' while Mrs. Piozzi in her  British Synonymy (1794) almost routinely qualifies her discriminations with such statements about her ``synonym'' groups as that the words ``are verbs very nearly yet not strictly synonymous,'' or ``are not I believe exactly synonymous.'' There can be no doubt that the early discriminators were perfectly aware that they were not dealing with synonyms in the then generally accepted meaning of that word.

In course of time, the distinction between the synonymous words of the early lexicographers and the nearly synonymous words of the discriminative synonymists, appropriately called  pseudosynonyms by Miss Whately (1851), gradually became eroded. As early as 1864 we find in Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language the entry ``SYNONYM ... One of two or more words in the same language which are the precise equivalents of each other or which have very nearly the same signification and therefore are liable to be confounded together.'' The trend toward a broad and loose definition of  synonym has continued, especially as synonymists have striven for ever longer lists of ever more remotely related ``synonyms.'' Indeed, there are those who compile ``synonym'' lists while denying the existence of synonyms.

All the varied definitions, both narrow and broad, somehow pass over what seems to the editors of Webster's Collegiate Thesaurus a fundamental point:  synonymy is a relation between meanings. True, it can only be expressed in terms of words since meaning is an attribute of words. Nonetheless, synonymy must be thought of as a property of meanings and it must be identified through careful analysis of these meanings. With this in mind, it early became apparent that a fresh approach to the study of synonyms was essential if Webster's Collegiate Thesaurus was to be more than another compilation of vaguely related terms.

One lead was offered by Alfred Dwight Sheffield in his introductory discussion in the third edition of Soule's  Dictionary of English Synonyms(1938), where he makes the point that

words can be displayed together in a synonym cluster to be chosen from when they share a basic meaning such that each synonym can be felt as offering this ``core-sense'' expressively enriched by further distinctions of sense, feeling, or tone.

Unfortunately, in his revision of Soule, Sheffield failed to carry over his eminently sound approach and did not make such core-senses available to the users of the book. Nor is it always apparent that his synonym lists consistently share such a basic meaning. Nonetheless, his approach pointed to the need for more thorough analysis in identifying synonyms for use in Webster's Collegiate Thesaurus.

For practical purposes of analysis it became necessary to view synonymy as a relationship not between words nor even between lexicographic senses of words. It was essential to seek out discrete objective denotations uncolored by such peripheral aspects of meaning as connotations, implications, or quirks of idiomatic usage. Only by dissecting senses is it possible to isolate ultimate meanings and reach something which goes a little beyond Sheffield's core-sense and which for simplicity's sake will be here designated  elementary meaning.  Perhaps this approach needs to be examined more specifically to clarify the object in view. For example, there is a sense of the noun  input in Webster's Third New International Dictionary that reads

: power or energy put into a machine or system for storage (as into a storage battery) or for conversion in kind (as into a mechanically driven electric generator or a radio receiver) or conversion of characteristics (as into a transformer or electric amplifier) usu. with the intent of sizable recovery in the form of output

Obviously much of this definition is, as it should be from the lexicographic point of view, peripheral matter designed to guide and orient the consultant of the dictionary rather than a fundamental part of the denotation of the word in the sense in question. Stripped of this peripheral matter the sense can be restated denotationally as

power or energy put into a machine or system for storage
or for conversion in kind or conversion of characteristics.
When this in turn is expressed graphically

power	machine	storage
put into a	for	conversion in kind
energy	system	conversion of characteristics

it becomes plain that there are twelve simple statements of denotation or individual elementary meanings associated in this single sense. Of these twelve only one, ``energy put into a system for storage,'' could reasonably be considered as a synonym of charge as applied to a storage battery. For the purposes of Webster's Collegiate Thesaurus a word is construed as a synonym if and only if it or one of its senses shares with another word or sense of a word one or more elementary meanings.

When the synonymous relationship is viewed in terms of elementary meanings, the process of selecting synonyms is both simplified and facilitated. For example, it is immediately apparent that no term narrower in scope than the pertinent meaning of the headword can be its synonym, i.e.,  sedan cannot be a synonym of automobile,  biceps cannot be a synonym of  muscle, and  imply cannot be a synonym of  communicate, even though a very definite relation exists between the members of each pair. On the other hand, a term (such as  input above) more broadly defined than another by the lexicographers is nonetheless a valid synonym of the latter if the two share one or more elementary meanings. In order to pin down the area of synonymity for the user, each main entry in Webster's Collegiate Thesaurus prefixes to its synonym list a  meaning core which states the elementary meaning or meanings and any peripheral notions common to all the members of the synonym group.

The Antonym

The term  antonym was introduced by C. J. Smith in  Synonyms and Antonyms (1867) as a term correlative to  synonym.  He identified the word somewhat ambiguously in his preface by stating that

words which agree in expressing one or more characteristic ideas in common he [the author] has regarded as Synonyms, those that negative one or more such ideas he has called Antonyms.

However, in his discussion of the etymology of the word  antonym he elaborates the idea that though basically expressing the notion of a word used  in substitution for another, this can be construed practically as one used  in opposition to another. The idea of opposition is further stressed by his suggestion of  counterterm as an alternative to  antonym.  The evidence clearly indicates that Smith in presenting the concept of  antonym had in mind words that constitute the  negative opposite of a term toward which they are antonymous. Unfortunately, the vagueness of his presentation and the looseness of his own usage within the body of his book have allowed great variation in subsequent application of the term. As a result, many synonymists have come to view antonyms as in some vague way converse to or contradictory of words toward which they are antonymous rather than as sharply, exactly, and completely opposed to such words in a manner that negates the implications of the latter.

In one collection or another various classes of terms have been construed as antonyms. Among these are several that, though of questionable validity, merit some consideration.
1  Relative terms have such a relationship one to the other that one can scarcely be used without suggesting the other (as  husband and wife, father and son, buyer and seller), yet there is neither real opposition nor real negation between such pairs. Their relation is reciprocal or correlative rather than antonymous under any reasonably strict interpretation of the antonymous relationship.
2  Complementary terms in a similar way are normally paired and exhibit a reciprocal relationship such that one is likely to seem incomplete without its mate (as in such pairs as  question and answer, seek and  find). This reciprocal relation which involves no negation is better viewed as sequential than antonymous.
3  Contrastive terms differ sharply from their ``opposites'' only in some parts of their meaning. They neither oppose nor negate full force, since they differ significantly in range of meaning and applicability, in emphasis, and in the peripheral suggestions they convey. For example,  destitute (an emphatic term carrying strong suggestions of misery and distress) is contrastive rather than antonymous with respect to  rich (a rather neutral and matter-of-fact term), and  poor (another neutral and matter-of-fact term) is the appropriate antonym of  rich.  Essentially, contrastive words are only tangentially opposed.

There can be no question that the inclusion of words like those just discussed whittles away at the basic notion of the antonym as an antithetical negative correlative of a term and that such whittling is undesirable. Certainly the treatment in dictionaries and manuals which indulge in this practice has become increasingly haphazard, uninformative, and unhelpful to the user of these works.

The editors of Webster's Collegiate Thesaurus feel that a reappraisal of the antonym concept is long overdue. As in the case of synonyms, the relation needs to be viewed as one between isolable segments of meaning rather than between words or lexicographic senses of words. For the purposes of this book, a word which in one or more of its elementary meanings precisely opposes a corresponding area of meaning of another word and which through its implications negates each implication that individualizes its opposite is an antonym of the latter word.

This definition effectively excludes from consideration those classes of words previously discussed which either imperfectly oppose or incompletely negate their ``opposites''. There remain, however, three classes of words from which antonyms may reasonably be drawn. These are:
1  Opposites without intermediates.  Such words are so opposed as to be mutually exclusive and to admit of no middle ground between them. They deny, point by point and item by item, whatever their opposites affirm. Thus, what is  perfect can be in no way  imperfect and what is  imperfect, to however slight a degree, by no shift or twist can be viewed as  perfect; one cannot in any way at once  accept and  reject or  agree and  disagree.
2  Opposites with intermediates.  Such words constitute the terminal elements in a range of divergence and are so genuinely and diametrically opposed that the language admits of no wider divergence. Thus, a scale of excellence might include  superiority, adequacy, mediocrity, and  inferiority, but only the first and last are so totally opposed that each precisely negates what its opposite affirms. Similarly, in the sequence  prodigal, extravagant, careless, careful, frugal, parsimonious there are three antonymous pairs.  Prodigal (stressing excessive extravagance) and parsimonious (stressing excessive frugality) effectively cancel one another, as do  extravagant (stressing disregard of conservation) and  frugal (stressing attention to conservation), or  careless (stressing imprudence in expenditure) and  careful (stressing prudence in expenditure). In such sequences the antonymous relation exists only between those members that are genuinely and precisely opposed. Other members (as  prodigal and  frugal or careless and  parsimonious) may contrast sharply, but they do not clash full force; they are contrastive rather than antonymous.
3  Reverse opposites.  These are terms that are opposed in such a way that each expresses the undoing or nullification of what the other affirms. Perhaps it is technically questionable practice to accept  nullification as the equivalent of  negation; yet the words overlap significantly in their range of meaning. Is it unreasonable, then, to accept two kinds of negation, one of which connotes privation (as,  bad is the negation, or privation, of  good) and the other of which connotes undoing or nullification (as,  reclamation is the negation, or nullification, of  abandonment)? Surely, these reverse opposites are entitled equally to consideration as antonyms when they precisely oppose and fully negate the special features of their opposites. Thus, disprove and its close synonym  refute so perfectly oppose and so clearly negate the implications of  prove that they fit the character of antonyms as effectively as does unkind with respect to  kind or  come with respect to  go.

So, then, for the purposes of Webster's Collegiate Thesaurus, words that are opposites without intermediates, opposites with intermediates, or reverse opposites, and only these will be construed as antonymous.

Related and Contrasted Words

Though the editors of Webster's Collegiate Thesaurus are committed to a rigorous policy in the identification of synonyms and antonyms, they have no intention of evading their responsibility to those interested in a wider range of material for use in word finding or vocabulary building. In order to make relevant additional matter available without doing violence to reasonably restricted concepts of synonymity and antonymity, the book features lists of related and contrasted words wherever these seem appropriate and likely to be helpful.   Related words (often misdescribed as synonyms) and  contrasted words (often misdescribed as antonyms) are actually near-synonyms and near-antonyms respectively. They are words which do not quite qualify as synonyms or antonyms under a strict definition of these terms but which are so closely related to or so clearly contrastable with the members of a synonym group that the user of the book has a right to have them brought to his attention under appropriate headings.

Phrases and Idiomatic Equivalents

In the search for ever longer synonym lists thesaurists increasingly have included phrases among their synonyms. These phrases fall into three classes:
1  word equivalents.  These are phrases that function as if they were single words. More often than not they are combinations of noun and attributive noun (as  county agent) or noun and adjective (as  hard sell) or of verb and adverb (as  make up). However, such phrases may be made up of any kinds of verbal elements and may perform the function of any part of speech (as  with one accord, adverb;  except for, preposition;  Near Eastern, adjective;  insofar as, conjunction). These firmly fixed combinations that act as if they were single words and fulfill the grammatical functions of single words can scarcely be entirely excluded from synonym lists.
2  glosses.  These are phrases that restate the meaning of a word. Essentially, they are brief, sometimes cryptic definitions. There is no definition of  synonym that reasonably can be construed to justify the inclusion of restatements or definitions in synonym lists. Thus, ``do heavy menial service'' is a gloss rather than a synonym of  drudge, ``have an opinion'' is a gloss of  opine, and ``in a state of inferiority to'' is a gloss of  under.  In the opinion of the editors of Webster's Collegiate Thesaurus, there is no place in a synonym list for such phrases since they contribute nothing useful to the vocabulary of the user of a thesaurus.
3  idioms.  These are phrases that have a collective meaning other than the additive meaning of the constituent words. For example, there are no literal meanings of  compare and  note that allow the phrase ``compare notes'' to mean ``to exchange observations and views''; yet, this is what it does mean. There are no literal meanings of the constituent words that allow ``come a long way'' to mean ``make progress, succeed''; nonetheless, it does mean this. When idiomatic phrases mean the same thing as particular words the temptation to include them in relevant synonym lists is strong. Such phrases, however, lack the qualities that excuse addition of word equivalents to synonym lists  -  they do not function as words but, rather, as different ways of conveying the notions that particular words convey. As in the case of glosses there is no definition of  synonym that justifies the inclusion of idioms in a synonym list. Nonetheless, such  idiomatic equivalents are of potential value to the user of a thesaurus since they can add force, variety, and sprightliness to his expression. The editors of Webster's Collegiate Thesaurus have effected a compromise and included selected  idiomatic equivalents of synonym groups or of particular words in synonym lists in separate lists that follow the pertinent synonym lists.