Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

Very well said. Maybe it's appropriate that the word "thesaurus" sounds like a kind of dinosaur.

The same damage can be done in some public-speaking groups. There is an organized chapter of one such group at one former employer. I once attended to hear a colleague do a presentation. One practice was to have someone provide a word of the day. Each person was encouraged to use that word somehow in what they said.

Now, a lot of nonnative English speakers attended these meetings. And many were painfully misled.

On this occasion, the word was "wax." The presenter correctly presented several different definitions and uses, including the "polish" meaning, as in using furniture wax. "Polish" was listed as a synonym.

Then disaster struck. The president of the chapter, who IS a native English speaker, stood up to introduce the next presentation, and referred to the person as "a waxed public speaker." Waxed? Then it occurred to me that she meant "polished" in the sense of accomplished. Impossible!

Every person after that misused the word "waxed" in exactly the same way. It made me feel ill each time. I never attended such a meeting again.

Sadly, I am sure it was not an INTENTIONAL joke. Each time it was misused, I started to break out afresh into a sweat. It only became mildly funny to me in retrospect -- mostly because I imagined her having strange insight into the speaker's personal grooming habits.

“we have a number of doubts about what you have told us”.

Good example, but is that an instance of using a thesaurus incorrectly or simply an instance of lack of knowledge with the language? I'd guess it is the latter.

I like what Billy Collins has to say about thesauri:

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Thesaurus

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It could be the name of a prehistoric beast
that roamed the Paleozoic earth, rising up
on its hind legs to show off its large vocabulary,
or some lover in a myth who is metamorphosed into a book.

It means treasury, but it is just a place
where words congregate with their relatives,
a big park where hundreds of family reunions
are always being held,
house, home, abode, dwelling, lodgings, and digs,
all sharing the same picnic basket and thermos;
hairy, hirsute, woolly, furry, fleecy, and shaggy
all running a sack race or throwing horseshoes,
inert, static, motionless, fixed and immobile
standing and kneeling in rows for a group photograph.

Here father is next to sire and brother close
to sibling, separated only by fine shades of meaning.
And every group has its odd cousin, the one
who traveled the farthest to be here:
astereognosis, polydipsia, or some eleven
syllable, unpronounceable substitute for the word tool.
Even their own relatives have to squint at their name tags.

I can see my own copy up on a high shelf.
I rarely open it, because I know there is no
such thing as a synonym and because I get nervous
around people who always assemble with their own kind,
forming clubs and nailing signs to closed front doors
while others huddle alone in the dark streets.

I would rather see words out on their own, away
from their families and the warehouse of Roget,
wandering the world where they sometimes fall
in love with a completely different word.
Surely, you have seen pairs of them standing forever
next to each other on the same line inside a poem,
a small chapel where weddings like these,
between perfect strangers, can take place.

Billy Collins