Saturday Rave: Roget's Thesaurus.

Peter Mark Roget (1779 - 1869) was an extraordinary man. He was a distinguished doctor who investigated the effect of the water supply on disease, and in his spare time he invented a new type of slide-rule (that, for the young ones among us, is a sort of calculating device) and also worked on the theory of the persistence of vision. He even claimed to have invented the Phenakistoscope.  

What Roget is mostly remembered for, though, is his Thesaurus. He suffered from mental problems all his life, and from childhood found making lists a useful coping mechanism. His Thesaurus emerged from that.

Here's an entry from his original work, and, as it was original, here's the entry on nonimitation:

Nonimitation. - no imitation; originality; creativeness, invention, creation.
Adj. unimitated [0bs3], uncopied [obs3]; unmatched, unparalleled; inimitable &c. 13; unique, original; creative, inventive, untranslated; exceptional, rare, sui generis uncommon [Lat], unexampled.

Some of it is a bit muddled, and the punctuation seems rather random; but still, Roget's great work must have helped many creative people from going mad just trying to think of another word for original.



Word To Use Today: thesaurus. (Not theAsaurus, by the way. That's probably some sort of a dinosaur). This word is the Greek for treasure.