Thesaurus thumps dictionary

When I was at secondary school two books were standard giveaways - the Gideon's Bible and a dictionary. Along the way, I lost both of these.

A gift I bought for myself and never failed to marvel at was my Roget's thesaurus. Alas, it also is no more. Tatty and ink-stained, it fell apart and had to go. It was also easier to consult online rather than amongst pages of teeny-tiny cross referenced words. Progress walks hand in hand with nostalgia.

Why was this volume so worthwhile? Why did it fill me with excitement?

I'll come clean: after a lifetime of reading, I know quite a lot of words. Not as many as some, but quite a lot. I think I know their meanings. If don't, I now ask Alexa or search the net (I have a dictionary on the shelf - not sure why).

When I write, I veer towards using the same words. This is why I need the help of a thesaurus. I still get a thrill from finding the exact word I need for a particular context. And I can't resist perusing the possibilities. English really does have an endless variety of lovely words, doesn't it?

Peruse.

Possibility.

As I've been editing, I've weeded out the bog standards and replaced them with the more muscular.

A couple of characters in my Five Wires novel have been a bit standoffish with each other. In my mind's eye I can see them react to each sleight. Eyes betray feelings so well and there are so many gradations of looks, so I needed many more words than only look and its derivatives. Thankfully, I rediscovered the words glance and scrutinise. Used sparingly, they import greater power - I'm sure - to the writing. A dictionary explains what a word means (hopefully not using ones you still don't understand) and that's that. A thesaurus gives you a gentler push towards understanding by laying out the word's friends and colleagues and peers. This collection gives you the measure of the words reach.

I'll take a thesaurus every time. No wonder my thesaurus was so bashed - it'd been in so many scrapes with myriad dictionaries.