TECH Signal 487
Mark Dominus explains Roget's Thesaurus as hierarchical concept classification, not synonym reference
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Mark Dominus wrote about seven books he keeps within reach, focusing on how Roget's Thesaurus organizes concepts into a thousand-division hierarchy for exploration rather than simple word substitution.
The piece demonstrates how a well-structured conceptual hierarchy surfaces related ideas a user might not have considered, which is relevant to anyone designing taxonomies or information architectures. Dominus's comparison of the 4th and 8th editions also illustrates that more content does not necessarily mean more useful content.
Written by elseif from the cluster below · every claim links back to a sourceThe three things worth knowing
Roget's Thesaurus classifies concepts into a hierarchy with a thousand divisions, from abstract categories like time down to specific relations like priority and posteriority.
Dominus found the 8th edition had more content than the 4th but not content he needed, so he retired it to a farther shelf.
The thesaurus is designed for conceptual exploration during writing, not for replacing common words with more impressive-sounding ones.
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