The New Collins Concise Dictionary of the English Language/The New Collins Thesaurus [antikvár]

Foreword The New Collins Thesaurus gives practical and accessible help to the writer or speaker who wants to find a better word to replace one that is not quite right. Though a thesaurus can be used for a variety of purposes - to increase one's vocabulary, to track down a term that has been temporarily forgotten, or just for fun - its main use is to enable you to find just the right word for your purpose - a word that is more precise, or more vivid, or simpler, or more formal (or informal) than any you can call to mind unaided. This being so, the best thesaurus is the one that enables you to find the most appropriate word quickly and easily on the largest possible number of occasions. The New Collins Thesaurus achieves this by arranging its material, like a dictionary, in a single alphabetical listing of main entry words. A thesaurus in dictionary form has a big advantage: you go straight to the word that is your starting point and there are the synonyms. No matter how many meanings a word has, synonyms for all of them are found in the one entry. There is no need to consult several different locations to be sure of getting the full range of choices. This thesaurus, however, has another distinct advantage: no synonym is entered unless it is fully substitutable for the headword in a sensible English sentence. Of course, not all items in a list are interchangeable - after all, some would claim that true synonyms, with exactly identical meanings, are rare things - but all are interchangeable in one context or another with the headword and often with each other. Because synonyms are chosen for inclusion with actual sentences in mind you can almost always find the better word that you are looking for. A wide range of main entry words (totalling some 16000) has been included, the criterion for selection always being that the term in question is likely to be looked up as an entry in its own right. If the source word in mind does not occur as a main entry (say, gallimaufry) the synonyms can still be found by trying a simpler word of the same general meaning (say, jumble or hotchpotch). Obsolete words are not, in general, given as main entries though some may be included among the synonyms