Learn Vocabulary with passage, Word Smart, 6th Edition

Learn Vocabulary with the passage, Word Smart, 6th Edition.

Thesauruses: Don’t Misuse, Abuse, Exploit, Corrupt, Misapply, or Misemploy Them.

A thesaurus is a dictionary-like reference book that lists synonyms for many words. A thesaurus can be another useful tool in your word-building campaign, but only if you use it properly. Many people don’t. Thesaurus abuse is common. Students often try to make their vocabularies seem bigger than they actually are by using a thesaurus to beef up the papers they write. (Neophytes chronically endeavor to induce their parlance to portend more magisterially
by employing a lexicon of synonyms to amplify the theses they inscribe.) They write their papers in their own words, then plug in words from a thesaurus. That’s what we did with the silly-sounding sentence in the parentheses above. You’d be surprised how many students actually compose their papers that way.

Still, a Thesaurus Can Be Useful

A thesaurus can be helpful—if you use it properly.

The best way to use a thesaurus is as a supplement to your dictionary, as a reference work that can help you find the word that expresses precisely what you are trying to say. A good thesaurus is intended to help a speaker or writer distinguish the shades of difference between words of similar meaning.

How to Use the Thesaurus: An Example

Let’s say you’re trying to describe Randolph, someone who never lends money to anyone. Randolph examines his monthly bank statement with a calculator to ensure that his interest has been properly computed to the penny. Randolph is someone who would have to think long and hard if a mugger presented him with the dilemma. “Your money or your life.”

The first word that comes to mind in describing Randolph may be cheap. Being the careful writer you are, you decide to see whether cheap is the most precise word you can come up with.