606: thesaurus Aug 5, 2016

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Even kids would mostly likely would know what a thesaurus is, but it used to have a more general, all encompassing meaning that was then it was refined. In the late 16th century, English took on the word ultimately from the Greek 'thēsauros' which means ‘storehouse, treasure’, in this case for words. The original meaning was a both a ‘dictionary' or 'encyclopedia’, as both were and are still a storehouse for information. Only was the meaning narrowed to what it is today when Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases was published in 1852, as a model for what we know thesauri to be now.

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