Customer Reviews

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Thesaurus, Second Edition

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3 star:		(1)
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I imagine there may be a better thesaurus out there somewhere, but this one meets my everyday needs just fine.

This will do if you only use a thesaurus occasionally but it won't do for the rest of us. The usually superlative Merriam-Webster product line missed the beat with this one. Although Roget's is a bit more time consuming to use, it is infinitely more rewarding than this volume. I was very disappointed at the small number of synonyms found for each entry in Merriam. In Roget, you can easily find many words that differ by only the slightest and most subtle shade of meaning. In this book, if it isn't an exact match, you won't know about it. I also saw no point to including antonyms in a thesaurus. I would have preferred many more synonyms included in the space used for antonyms.

Most other dictionary-format thesauri (Roget’s II, for instance) simply won’t give you what you want on the first try. If, for instance, you want a more decorous word for “smelly” you’re brusquely told to “see MALODOROUS”. This means that most of the words you are likely to be looking up require a time-wasting two step process: first find the word you want to replace, then find the main entry for that concept. By the time you’ve finished flipping back and forth through the pages you’ve forgotten what it is your looking for.

The Webster’s version is a thousand times more convenient. If you look up a specific word you’re guaranteed to find about a dozen or so of the most common synonyms right there (funky, stinky, rank, etc.). This first entry is probably all you’ll need and it constitutes the main time-saving benefit of this edition. But there’s more. The real verbomaniacs among us get referred to the main entry of the concept. Here you’ll find the mother lode of words, often numbering into the dozens and ranging from the most commonplace to the ridiculously obscure (e.g. mephitic, olid, or stenchful). You’ll also find related terms (vile, rotten, pestilential), contrasting terms (deoderized, fresh, clean), and antonyms (fragrent, sweet) all in the same place, just as you would in Roget’s conceptually arranged International edition. Like I said, most writers are sure to find what they need on the first try.

The only other thesaurus that approaches this one is the Random House Collegiate, but I don’t think that one has definitions; this one does. I’m also pretty sure this one has more words than Random House, Roget’s 21st Century, or any other.

(I’m glad the guy below got to know thesaurus.)

Most other dictionary-format thesauri (Roget’s II, for instance) simply won’t give you what you want on the first try. If, for instance, you want a more decorous word for “smelly” you’re brusquely told to “see MALODOROUS”. This means that most of the words you are likely to be looking up require a time-wasting two step process: first find the word you want to replace, then find the main entry for that concept. By the time you’ve finished flipping back and forth through the pages you’ve forgotten what it is your looking for.

The Webster’s version is a thousand times more convenient. If you look up a specific word you’re guaranteed to find about a dozen or so of the most common synonyms right there (funky, stinky, rank, etc.). This first entry is probably all you’ll need and it constitutes the main time-saving benefit of this edition. But there’s more. The real verbomaniacs among us get referred to the main entry of the concept. Here you’ll find the mother lode of words, often numbering into the dozens and ranging from the most commonplace to the ridiculously obscure (e.g. mephitic, olid, or stenchful). You’ll also find related terms (vile, rotten, pestilential), contrasting terms (deoderized, fresh, clean), and antonyms (fragrent, sweet) all in the same place, just as you would in Roget’s conceptually arranged International edition. Like I said, most writers are sure to find what they need on the first try.

The only other thesaurus that approaches this one is the Random House Collegiate, but I don’t think that one has definitions; this one does. I’m also pretty sure this one has more words than Random House, Roget’s 21st Century, or any other. It’s [inexpensive] for a hardcover, too,..., so how can you lose?

...

If you want to take GRE GMAT or want to know thesaurus, it is.

AND It is cheaper than other books