Are you wanting to write the perfect love letter to impress your sweetheart for valentines day? Do you have to write detailed instructions about how to find the dental office, Expressions Dental Centre, in London Ontario? A lot of us find writing an daunting task. It can be quite a challenge coming up with the right words to express what you are truly feeling. You may have to write an article about how best to install a pressure fitting for your company's monthly meeting. The thesaurus can be a very useful tool when looking for the best word to describe the item you are writing about.

A thesaurus is a reference that lists words with a similar meaning, which are frequently called synonyms. This is different from a dictionary, which will tell you the meaning of a word. If you're researching organic diapers and what to look up a word that you don't understand than you would do that in a dictionary. If, instead, you were writing copy for a marketing campaign and wanted to use alliteration or a rhyming scheme than you might want the help of a thesaurus. The largest thesaurus being used today has nearly one million entries.

There have been several records of things that could be called thesauruses being used throughout history. Philo of Byblos lived in the first century and is said to be the first person to create a list of synonyms as well as several other scientific documents. There is a Sanskrit version that is written in poetic form and dates back at least to 400 AD. The first edition of a resource called a thesaurus came in 1805 and was put together by Peter Mark Roget. This was similar to what you will see now if you want to look up a word to describe sewage pumps or a small child.

Another thing that you will find in a thesaurus is antonyms. These are words that mean the opposite of the word that you are looking up. If you looked up the word tall, for example, it would give you a variety of words meaning large and antonyms meaning small or short. There are many different uses for a resource like this. While you will find a lot of poetry owners with a thesaurus on the shelf, you will also find them in the homes of schoolteachers to business owners in their condos.

One of the types of people that a thesaurus might be useful to is those who are learning a new language. If you're in North America in order to attend school or learn English for a couple of months than you may want to invest in a good thesaurus. Once you have learned all of the basic words with the help of your classes and translation guide, this will help you to extend your vocabulary.