I adore a Thesaurus. I love a dictionary too, but thesauruses, (or is it thesauri?) are a lovely way to shred hours of time. These days, thesauri are all over the internet and you just type in a word and up come hundreds of synonyms. The word comes from the Greek for storehouse or treasure. How delicious!

But there is something earthy and just yummy about flicking through the pages of Roget’s Thesaurus (still the best one, in my opinion). The absolute joy of looking up a word and then honing it down to exactly what it is you want to say. Or being dragged along a path that you had no intention of going because you came across a word you didn’t know. Bliss!

Of course, using one in the wrong way; for example, to make yourself look posh, can just be wrong.

The funniest exercise is to write a really simple sentence and then substitute all the words you can by using a Thesaurus. Suddenly, the sentence doesn’t make quite the same sense.

Let’s take that sentence above:

“The wittiest application is to carve a really unassuming decree and then replace all the texts you can by exploiting a Wordlist. Unexpectedly, the ruling doesn’t construct completely the constant logic.”

Actually, that’s really quite good.

What this demonstrates though, is the huge application of words that we have at our fingertips. Use them instead of LOL and OMG. These have their place, of course, but let’s not lose the rich (opulent, lush, gorgeous, magnificent) variety that the English language offers.