One can only imagine how an English version of this type of thesaurus might read.įast-forward to 1805, where a British doctor named Peter Mark Roget started compiling a list of words arranged by meaning. In the 4th Century CE, an Indian poet and grammarian named Amara Sinha wrote his version of a thesaurus in Sanskrit (a classical language of South Asia) as a long poem. It was written by Philo of Byblos, a Greek writer, grammarian, and historian. “On Synonyms ” is the first known thesaurus, and dates back as far as the late 1st Century.

The word thesaurus comes from the Latin word “thēsaurus,” which was derived from the Greek “thēsauros.” The literal meaning of the Greek origin word is “a treasure,” “treasury,” “storehouse,” or “chest.” In other words, a thesaurus is a book, or “treasure chest” of synonyms. The first modern English thesaurus contained approximately 15,000 words. In honor of National Thesaurus Day, which is celebrated in the United States on January 18, we decided to answer all your curiosities. You might even be curious about who created the thesaurus, when the first one was written, and how the word thesaurus came to be. If you’re a word nerd like us, you might find yourself constantly searching for synonyms.

Synonyms improve your writing because they help you avoid empty words and allow you to more accurately express yourself.

Thesauruses provide easy access to a seemingly endless number of synonyms.

Peter Mark Roget wrote the first modern thesaurus.

The word thesaurus comes from the Greek word “thēsauros,” which means “ treasure,” “ treasury,” or “ chest.”.

What is a thesaurus