مكنز وبستير الجامعي للغة الإنكليزية
تاريخ النشر: 01/01/1998
الناشر: مكتبة لبنان ناشرون
نبذة نيل وفرات:WEBSTER'S COLLEGIATE THESAURUS is a wholly new book resulting from long study and planning and differing from existent thesauruses in a number of significant respects.
what does the user look for in a thesaurus? The consensus agrees that he is seeking a more appropriate term than the one he ...has in mind. This very broad concept is scarcely consonant with the typical thesaurus presentation of ''synonyms'' and sometimes ''antonyms''. In point of fact, the user may be seeking a synonym, a word stronger or weaker in force, one of slightly different meaning, a more starchy or more folksy word, an idiomatic phrase that conveys the same idea, or a word that to a greater or less degree contrasts with his starting point. Patently, all these possible uses cannot be subsumed reasonably under the rather unitary notions of ''synonym'' and ''antonym''. Perhaps the longevity of Roget's Thesaurus rests on the simple fact that in spite of its complexity and lack of guidance, it does spread before the user a greater body of material to browse through than any comparable book heretofore available. Webster's Collegiate Thesaurus is designed to present a similar range of material but in a readily available and highly structured form that minimizes the consultant's need to grope and guess.
Additional features of Webster's Collegiate Thesaurus designed to facilitate its use are the provision at each main entry of a concise statement of the segment of denotation in which a group of words can be construed as synonyms, a strictly alphabetical organization, and the entry at its own alphabetical place of each word that appears as a synonym at a main entry. The absence or inadequate handling of the first of these features is a major flaw in most existent thesauruses. Though many justifications have been offered for avoiding the second, they all boil down to the implausible notion that the members of a group of words are synonymous but some are more synonymous than others! Perhaps unfairly, one can't help feeling that the only valid explanation for nonalphabetical listing of properly chosen synonyms appears in one specialized dictionary of synonyms whose author comments, ''Apologies are in order, however, for my inability to maintain alphabetical order within the categories, the plea being of course lack of time.'' Finally, since no one can anticipate where the user's search may start, it seems only logical to enter each synonym in such a way that it can serve as a convenient starting point in his searching. إقرأ المزيد