Bartlett's Roget's Thesaurus (Hardcover)

~ Bartlett's (Author)

Editorial Reviews

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When is a thesaurus more than a thesaurus? When it is Bartlett's Roget's Thesaurus. As well as providing synonyms like a standard thesaurus, this work has the added value of the creative combination of both Bartlett's and Roget's traditions plus some features of an almanac. Roget devised a conceptual (as opposed to alphabetical) thesaurus. The imagery of Bartlett's quotations adds breadth and depth to some categories here, and the 100 almanaclike lists of facts, interspersed in the body, supplement the synonyms. The introductory portion of the book includes an explanation of and rationale for this unique approach to thesaurus preparation. It is a North American work with emphasis on contemporary idiom and usage. There are two category lists, one grouped by concept and the other alphabetical, plus a directory of sidebar lists and a list of abbreviations on the contents page.

For each category in the thesaurus, there are selections of synonyms for each appropriate part of speech. The general arrangement of the thesaurus can be visualized from the following example. The concept of Spatial Relations has 61 categories including space, location, cities, rivers, absence, expansion, etc. Category 569 Mountains and Hills starts with a quote by John Ruskin. It has nouns, adjectives, and verbs that describe things hilly or mountainous. There are cross-references to such related categories as Geology and Height. There is also a list of Notable Mountains, Mountain Ranges and Hills. The lists are a form of ready reference. The one associated with category 299 Love is of Famous Lovers of Fact and Fiction. In the lengthy and very detailed index, each word, phrase, foreign expression, and idiom in the thesaurus is found with an associated number for category and/or keyword and paragraph.

This is a great book (great 445.14)--great in contents (plentiful 97.4), great in size (heavy 538.9), great value for the money (important 799.7), and great fun to use (wonderful! 294.20). Highly recommended to all libraries and wordsmiths.

Review

"When is a thesaurus more than a thesaurus? When it is BARTLETT'S ROGET'S THESAURUS....This is a great book (great 445.14)--great in contents (plentiful 97.4), great in size (heavy 538.9), great value for the money (important 799.7), and great fun to use (wonderfull 294.20). Highly recommended to all libraries and wordsmiths." --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 1456 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; Ind Sub edition (August 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316101389
• ISBN-13: 978-0316101387
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 7.8 x 2.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #402,632 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

81 of 81 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best currently available thesaurus, March 4, 1997

By	Frank Paris (Beaverton, OR USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I've used a lot of thesauruses over the years, including Roget's International Thesaurus intensively through several editions, and the new Bartlett's eclipses them all. The latest Roget's International Thesaurus is in some respects inferior to previous editions, as I was no longer finding the exact word I was looking for. I have an extremely high success rate with this new Bartlett version. It's fun just to browse around in it. Many quotations

34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not all thesauruses are alike, September 6, 2002

By	Robert Fallon (El Cerrito, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

After several days of research, during which I sought recommendations in books for writers and tested a dozen competitors, I have found Bartlett's Roget's Thesaurus the clear winner. Compared to its rivals, it is cheaper, but printed on better paper with a more legible typeface. It has a useful thumb index and a clean layout unlike the others. Its wordlists, topics, and lists are more relevant.

Best of all, it's more intuitive than the others--not only in the process of looking up a word, but in the list of words found. And at the end of most wordlists are references to related concepts that increase the smart, intuitive feel to the book, a feature lacking in the competition. I consistently found the right word and/or wordlist more easily with Roget's Bartlett's than with Roget's International 6th.

The crucial step to finding the right word is when looking in the index. Fortunately, Bartlett's lists every single word in the index, whereas Roget's International 6th does not. Not finding a word in a thesaurus index is disconcerting, and substituting that word for a simpler, indexed one doesn't always lead in the right direction. Also, instead of distinguishing between nouns and verbs in the index, as Roget's International 6th does with hard-to-read type, Bartlett's streamlines the search by using descriptive phrases that distinguish, for example, "pedal" the part of a keyboard instrument from "pedal" meaning propel. This helps to pinpoint the right wordlist.

Despite its unwieldy name, Bartlett's Roget's does not exactly combine both reference tools. There is only about one quotation from Bartlett's every two pages, making the quotations more of a decorative distraction than a useful reference. But I see nothing wrong with the innocuous added bonus in a thesaurus that easily beats the others.

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars GRE!!? Looking for the best thesaurus? Look no further!, November 14, 2000

By	shaggyC5Z06 "SS" (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

I have, like some of my overzealous opposite numbers, gone overboard by going into a spree of pre test consumerism esp. that of books related to GRE. I have bought nearly 4 different thesauri but Barlett's Roget's thesaurus surpasses them all. For example: Crabbed which basically means irratible, ill tempered, spiteful, cranky, pettish, etc. Now, if you search for the meaning of crabbed in merriam websters dictionary (the best available on the planet) it will spit out the meaning as sour or peevish (irratible). But if you try to search for the synonyms list for the word crabbish, no other thesauri, in which happened i happened to check, except Barletts Rogets, had irritable as a synonym in its synonym list for the headword - crabbing. This is one of the several examples which have enraged me enough to discard my various other thesauri in favor of Barletts Rogets Thesaurus.