2009年6月1日星期一

Synonym, thesaurus, philologist, synonymous with

It is a company that helped lift hundreds of thousands of American workers into the middle class. It transformed Detroit into the Silicon Valley of its day, a symbol of America’s talent for innovation. It built celebrated cars, like Cadillacs, that became synonymous with luxury.

書評
A Yen for Synonyms
Wall Street Journal - USA
It is better to consult a reference work, such as the Oxford English Dictionary, that gives examples of how a word is used in a sentence. ...

Is there another word for any word you know -- a more impressive, more apt or more elegant word that means the same thing? A thesaurus is built on the principle that there is indeed.

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Outstanding! Remarkable! Extraordinary! Striking! Exceptional! Singular! On this date in 1852, Peter Mark Roget, a British physician (doctor) and philologist (lexicographer), published his thesaurus. But this was only the last in a long line of his achievements (accomplishments). Earlier in life, he invented (devised) a forerunner (precursor) of the slide rule. He studied medicine in Edinburgh, practiced it in Manchester, taught it in London, and served as secretary of the Royal Society. But it was his six-section thesaurus — from the ancient Greek and Latin word for treasury (storehouse) — that cemented his fame (renown) and provided a family business (enterprise) for his son and grandson.

synonymous
adj.

Having the same or a similar meaning: synonymous words.
Equivalent in connotation: “a widespread impression that . . . Hollywood was synonymous with immorality” (Doris Kearns Goodwin).

[From Medieval Latin synōnymus, from Greek sunōnumos : sun-, syn- + onoma, onuma, name.]