Word: roget
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Bennett's difficulty-and it kept him from ever fully scaling the literary heights-was his inability to feel deeply. He once said if he had to choose between the collected works of Shakespeare and Roget's Thesaurus, "I would let Billy go, upon my word." He could write perceptively, but he had to lament, while trying to write about love: "I have never been in love. Sometimes the tears start to my eyes, but they never fall...
Chess & Geology. Dr. Roget did not start out in life to be one of Britain's grand masters of words. The son of a French Protestant minister, he was actually a scientific prodigy. At 12 he was teaching himself advanced mathematics; at 14 he entered the University of Edinburgh; at 19 he graduated as a full-fledged M.D. Eventually he became the nation's leading authority on physiology and anatomy...
...Beard the Lion ..." It all began with Roget's habit of listing words according to the way botanists classify plants and their families. But when he finally retired from practice in 1840, he decided to extend his listings further. To Roget, the abuse of language was becoming a menace. "A misapplied or misapprehended term," said he, "is sufficient to give rise to ... interminable disputes; a misnomer has turned the tide of popular opinion; a verbal sophism has decided a party question; an artful watchword, thrown among combustible materials, has kindled the flame of deadly warfare . . ." Roget hoped not only...
...matter, intellect, volition, affections). Then under each class he listed the pertinent one-word topics, following these with a rich array of synonyms, colloquialisms and comparisons. The topic courage, for instance, involved for him everything from audacity to spunk, Perseus to gamecock, to "beard the lion in his den." Roget also included appropriate quotations: e.g., "Every dog is a lion at home" . . . "The valiant never taste of death but once...
...Today, Roget's grandson carries on the work, adding new words and phrases sent in by correspondents all over the world. After 100 years, the Thesaurus has not ended the menace Roget saw. But it has sent thousands of users to searching for the right word, has persuaded thousands more to spread their "wings for flight...