Imagine that you are at a cocktail party speaking with an ornithologist or an entomologist. If an ornithologist, she has just begun to wax lyrical about the nesting habits of barn swallows. If an entomologist, he has just begun to describe, in detail, how a theridiid spider weaves its web. The eyes of both glitter with excitement, because this is THEIR subject. This is THEIR world.

You suppress a yawn.

You scratch your ear.

You look yearningly across the room at your host, hoping to catch his eye and engender a rescue. But, no. He is busy at the bar, handing out drinks.

Hello there. It’s me. I’m back and, being as self-absorbed as any ornithologist or entomologist at a cocktail party, I am about to bore you to death (I hope not) with my favorite subject, which, of course – oh you know me so well! – is words.

So brace yourself, because I have just discovered The Most Fascinating Thing.

At some point in time when I wasn’t looking, the 1911 edition of Roget’s Thesaurus entered the public domain (at least, I think it did. If not, somebody is taking liberties), and was published on the Internet in 1991 by Project Gutenberg.

How in the world did I miss that?

The Gutenberg Project’s website introduces the “Read online now” Free Download with this paragraph:

“’Roget's Thesaurus by Peter Mark Roget is a reference work first published in 1852. Roget, a British physician and lexicographer, created this revolutionary system of verbal classification to help writers struggling with composition. Rather than arranging words alphabetically, his thesaurus organizes them into six primary classes with over a thousand meaning clusters, grouping words by semantic relationships and conceptual connections. Originally containing 15,000 words, the work has expanded through successive editions while  maintaining Roget's foundational organizational system, becoming one of the most widely used English-language reference tools.”

I wrote a previous column about Bartlett’s Familiar Quotation, and how I have been in love with John Bartlett most of my life. But I never before admitted … love triangle alert! … that I love Peter Mark Roget for his thesaurus, too.

I have a beaten up and battered paperback fifth edition that I have carried around with me for about 30 years, and it is always at my elbow or on my lap when I am writing a book. When I am working on a newspaper column at my computer, I often consult an on-line thesaurus. But trust me, it isn’t the same.

Let’s say I want to find an alternative to the word “excitement,” because I am afraid of over-using it in a chapter that I’m writing about tracking down an arsonist. Here are the first synonyms the Internet thesaurus gives as options.

“Thrill • Passion • Agitation • Enthusiasm • Turmoil • Commotion • Stimulation • Fervor • Excitation.”

However, from the Gutenberg Project’s full transcription of Roget’s book (bless them!), these are the synonyms suggested for the same word:

“NOUN. feeling; suffering; endurance, tolerance, sufferance, supportance, experience, response; sympathy &c.; impression, inspiration, affection, sensation, emotion, pathos, deep sense. warmth, glow, unction, gusto, vehemence; fervor, fervency; heartiness, cordiality; earnestness, eagerness; empressement, gush, ardor, zeal, passion, enthusiasm, verve, furore, fanaticism; excitation of feeling &c.; fullness of the heart &c.; passion &c.; ecstasy &c … blush, suffusion, flush; hectic; tingling, thrill, turn, shock; agitation &c.; quiver, heaving, flutter, flurry, fluster, twitter, tremor; throb, throbbing; pulsation, palpitation, panting; trepidation, perturbation; ruffle, hurry of spirits, pother, stew, ferment; state of excitement.”

The paragraphs for “verb” and “adjective” are just as long.

I just now cross-checked with my aforementioned battered and bruised 1992 paperback edition of the book, and, although the Internet edition of Roget’s Thesaurus isn’t as extensive, it’s still pretty damned comprehensive. Which means that if I’m stuck at my computer and too lazy to walk across the room to consult my paperback thesaurus, I can almost certainly find the right word in the thesaurus on the Guttenberg Project’s website.

Why, then, is my old standby 1,299-page paper volume still so imperative?

Because it is less easy to use, and exposes me to words I might never even have considered. Going back to “excitement,” when using a real, paperbound (or hardcover) thesaurus, if you look up the word in the index at the back of the book, you are not given only one option for its meaning, you are also given:

Passion ▪ Stimulation • Emotion ▪ Excitation • Impatience ▪ Incitement • Agitation ▪

Heat

Which provides paragraph after paragraph of nuanced connotations, as well as great ideas for different ways to say what I want to say. Or to say what I never even would have thought to say. As well as words to replace ones so tired and overused that they have lost their meaning – like “closure” “empowerment” or “marginalization.” My preference is always a tome I can hold in my hands, flop open on my lap, and flip through the pages, but Project Gutenberg has given us this marvelous Internet alternative.

So … Go in peace, my children.

And for heaven’s sake: Don’t be lazy. Consult your thesaurus, and find a really, really evocative word.

WORD: N. term, vocable; terminology, lexicography … et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Copyright © Shelly Reuben, 2026. Shelly Reuben’s books have been nominated for Edgar, Prometheus, and Falcon awards. For more about her writing, visit www.shellyreuben.com