January 18, 2023 – Thesaurus

Happy National Thesaurus Day! Today we honor the thesaurus to commemorate Peter Mark Roget’s birthday. Roget was a retired physician when he started working on his thesaurus in 1846. One of his biographers said that Roget struggled with depression for most of his life, and his pet project of putting together a thesaurus was partially an effort to battle it. Roget’s Thesaurus, the first modern thesaurus, was released to the public in April 1852. Only 1,000 copies were printed, and it featured 15,000 words organized conceptually into 6 categories. The book is updated regularly, and the most recent edition includes 443,000 words. Since it was released in 1852, Roget’s Thesaurus has never been out of print, and it continues to be one of the most widely used reference books in the English language. Learn more here.