I bought my Roget’s Thesaurus when I was in high school, hauled it back and forth through four years of college and decades of cross-country moves, and — long after my matching Websters Dictionary and Thesaurus have been discarded in favor of online tools — I make sure Roget’s sits near at hand whenever I am deep in the throes of composition.
Yeah, I know you’re not supposed to use a thesaurus when you write, because even though two words are listed as synonyms, it doesn’t mean they have the same exact meaning. Words are like colors: cyan is not aqua is not teal, and even though you can very often substitute one for the other it doesn’t mean you should. But I have always suffered from poor vocabulary recall: I know what the words mean, but I can’t always bring them to mind without some kind of prompt. That’s when I turn to my thesaurus, where I can hunt for the word that has the precise meaning and texture that I need.
A “synonym finder” like Websters is fine most of the time, but when the perfect word still eludes me, that’s when I turn to Roget’s, a word hoard that is organized not by the alphabet, but by ideas. Austin Kleon’s discovery and tribute to Roget’s Thesaurus (below) captures the power of this unique reference — one that I don’t think has ever been captured in an online tool.
Roget’s can be tricky to use — you have to turn first to the index to start your search, and then peruse various sections of the book to track down the thematic section that suits your needs. But it’s well worth the effort. More importantly, it’s fun! I know that admitting that makes me a word nerd, but the rich complexities of language are endlessly fascinating to me.
My other distractions this week are equally personal. I studied Latin for a couple years as Medieval Studies student in college, but no one expected us to speak it aloud, so it’s interesting to see that this “dead” language is having something of a comeback. (Side note: One of my history professors met her husband when they were both studying at the Vatican — Latin was the common language they shared and fell in love in. Amo, amas, amat!) And for the writers among you, some advice for storytelling that runs counter to the usual. I hope you enjoy!
A Library of Words
“What this means is that if you organize a thesaurus alphabetically (which is exactly what publishers have been doing for the past hundred years or so) you essentially destroy everything truly unique about the book. You’re left with a synonym dictionary, which is convenient and useful, sure, but doesn't really clue you in on the matrix of meanings presented by organizing words by category.”
Read more: A Library of Words by Austin Kleon
Quid Significat?
“The fact that these individuals are speaking Latin, a language most often seen in written form, is unusual in and of itself. But the more important aspect of the exercise is how the students are interacting with the text in a living way. They’re reading Plutarch’s depiction of Cicero’s death in the very place where, in 43 B.C.E., the famous orator’s cut-off hands were placed as a warning that the Roman Republic was ending and the empire was beginning.
“Though Cicero didn’t exactly rise from the dust of the forum that July 2022 day, one instructor refers to the learning experience as a type of a séance. The excitement in the air is palpable as ancient Rome becomes less a place of words and books and more that of living, breathing humans. It’s hard to imagine the bustling forum as it once was—a site of power, religion and commerce, where Latin was spoken in a functional way. But as the teenagers speak the language, relishing its intonations and cadences, that image slowly clicks.”
Read more: Spoken Latin is Making a Comeback from Smithsonian Magazine
Once Upon a Writing Seminar
“I often start my MFA courses with a discussion of fairy tales. It seems an obvious place to start, since fairy tales are some of humanity’s oldest stories and likely the first stories that my students remember reading as children. But I also love starting with fairy tales because they violate more or less every single rule of fiction writing that is drilled into us in creative writing classes.”
Read more: Fairy Tale as MFA Antidote by Counter Craft