THE BORN LESAR
No, a thesaurus is not a flesh-eating dinosaur
My thesaurus is worn, threadbare, shabby, deteriorated, frayed even, some might say. I use it often, repeatedly, recurrently and downright frequently, for those occasions when I need just the right word to say precisely what I intend, what I mean, what I aim, what I have in mind.
You might say a good thesaurus is to a writer what a bendable rubber hose and an industrial-strength suction pump are to an undertaker. Without it, see, you can do your job, just not as well, not as sufficiently, not as amply, not as adequately. If you're going to strive for perfection, as I pretend to do, you need the proper tools. And a lot of chocolate. It helps with everything.
A thesaurus, for those of you who may not know, is a book of words, basically. It lists thousands, and behind each one offers a list of alternatives, other words that mean much the same. For example, after the word 'flabby,' I find limp, soft and flaccid. I know, odd I should pick that one; it's the chocolate, you know.
The thesaurus I use at my desk almost every day has been with me since college. I believe I bought it my freshman year at the university bookstore, for $2.95, according to the price on the binding. It's paperback and at least 572 pages in length, but some in the back section on foreign phrases have been torn away over the years. No matter, I don't need to describe myself as non compos mentis all that often. Hey, if I'm going to make fun of myself, the least you can do is look it up.
The cover of my thesaurus is half-missing, or half-present, if you're one of those people. What's left is ripped and bent, and the top corners of the first 75 pages or so are folded over from repeated use. The edges of the pages are scuffed where my right thumb skims across them when I'm looking up a word, and for some reason, page 491 is dog-eared. Guess I was trying to figure out why women always call me superficial. I mean, it's not like I'm shallow, trivial, inane or skin-deep ... hey, wait a minute ...
My word book is a Roget's Thesaurus, which is simply the most revered name in the business, if for no other reason than the fact I use it. Peter Mark Roget was actually a doctor who lived from 1779-1869, but he is most famous not for ripping out people's diseased gall bladders with a rusty knife, but for keeping exhaustive lists of words. In all, he categorized various words into a thousand lists, and the first set was published in Roget's simple thesaurus in 1852.
I would tell you exactly how many words my thesaurus contains, but again, the front and back covers where that information might be found are mostly torn away, and if you think I'm going to count them for you, you're more insane, mad, unhinged, psychotic, reasonless, crackbrained, nutty, screwy, whacko, bananas, tetched and freaky (page 257) than I thought. Then again, I heard you thought a thesaurus was a close cousin of the stegosaurus, so I should have known.
I consider myself to have a fairly generous vocabulary -- having once incorrectly used 'winsome' in a sentence about my dog's breath -- but even I find myself occasionally needing a little help to write not just accurately, but excitingly. See, any old writer worth his weight in liquid White-out can pen something ordinary like, 'My ex-wife was cold,' but it takes a true literary genius to say, 'My ex-wife had the personality of hoarfrost.' If I wanted to, I could also say said ex-spouse was chilly, gelid, boreal, arctic, frostbitten, raw, bitter, biting and glacial, but I would never do something like that. Heh.
It's surprising how subtly one similar word can differ from another, and to use the wrong one changes the meaning of a statement. For instance, I can say 'Newt Gingrich would make a disgusting choice for president,' and that would be different than if I said 'Newt Gingrich would make a nauseating choice for president.' True, they both have decidedly negative connotations for The Newtster as a candidate, but one sentence suggests that such a development would be merely upsetting, while the other hints at physical expulsion of partially-digested stomach contents. I trust you can smell the difference.
The English language really is quite rich, and it would be, in my opinion, a shame not to utilize as much of it as one can. I'm not sure about the accuracy of these percentages -- and I really have no inclination whatsoever to check them -- but let's just say that 50 percent of the words in our language make up 98 percent of our spoken and written usage. We use common words like 'the' and 'this' and 'spork' all the time, of course, but it's also true that most of our descriptive words are simple and overused. I mean, how many times do you hear someone say, 'Boy, it's hot outside,' compared to 'Boy, it's fervent outside.' Likewise, you often read statements like, 'President Obama said Pakistan could do more to battle terrorism,' when it would be nice -- just once -- to read, 'President Obama commanded Pakistan to do more to battle terrorism, or he would send in the entire U.S. Armed Forces to turn Islamabad into a humongous sand trap.' OK, I embellish a little, but you get the point.
Obviously, I use my thesaurus a lot, because I want to write plainly, vividly, lucidly, limpidly and even understandably, every now and then. If I do so, you're more apt to like what I write and less likely to call me dull, obtuse, stupid, absurd, banal or ignorant, at least to my face. Oh, sure, you may still describe me to your children as dreadful, terrible, ghastly and alarming, and warn them that they should run, sprint, scurry or flee if ever I come around, but you'll always be inclined to add, 'Geez, he always uses the most precise word imaginable.' In fact, I may even have that inscribed on my tombstone, right below, 'Dean Lesar no longer works here.'
Well, that's it, my task here for the week is complete, full, whole, absolute, thorough, conclusive, sufficient, abundant, replete, exhaustive, saturated, sweeping, crowning, and certainly not least of all, chock-full (page 81.) Join me here next week when we explore, seek, search, examine, investigate and inquire into (page 178) the question, 'Why does anyone read this junk, rubbish, waste, refuse, trash, scrap and claptrap (page 273)?'
