Bartlett's Roget's Thesaurus

Rating:
Summary: Bartlett's Roget's Thesaurus
Review: A superb composition and reference tome for all time. Thanks for all the considerations of nuances, graduations of feelings, phonemics and two countries separated by the same language, et a.l. Buy this book for a most enjoyable read while traveling, poolside or during the morning coffeehouse regimine. [e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: Not all thesauruses are alike
Review: After several days of research, during which I sought recommendations in books for writers and tested a dozen competitors, I have found Bartlett's Roget's Thesaurus the clear winner. Compared to its rivals, it is cheaper, but printed on better paper with a more legible typeface. It has a useful thumb index and a clean layout unlike the others. Its wordlists, topics, and lists are more relevant.

Best of all, it's more intuitive than the others--not only in the process of looking up a word, but in the list of words found. And at the end of most wordlists are references to related concepts that increase the smart, intuitive feel to the book, a feature lacking in the competition. I consistently found the right word and/or wordlist more easily with Roget's Bartlett's than with Roget's International 6th.

The crucial step to finding the right word is when looking in the index. Fortunately, Bartlett's lists every single word in the index, whereas Roget's International 6th does not. Not finding a word in a thesaurus index is disconcerting, and substituting that word for a simpler, indexed one doesn't always lead in the right direction. Also, instead of distinguishing between nouns and verbs in the index, as Roget's International 6th does with hard-to-read type, Bartlett's streamlines the search by using descriptive phrases that distinguish, for example, "pedal" the part of a keyboard instrument from "pedal" meaning propel. This helps to pinpoint the right wordlist.

Despite its unwieldy name, Bartlett's Roget's does not exactly combine both reference tools. There is only about one quotation from Bartlett's every two pages, making the quotations more of a decorative distraction than a useful reference. But I see nothing wrong with the innocuous added bonus in a thesaurus that easily beats the others.

Rating:
Summary: Really really good
Review: An excellent thesaurus with an easy-to-follow layout. Regular use of it has enabled me practically to eliminate the word "basically" from my vocabulary.

Rating:
Summary: Amazing!
Review: Being a library student, I found this reference tool, i.e., Bartlett's Roget's Thesaurus by Roger Donald (Editor), to be indispensable. Growing up speaking another language, i.e., Swedish, I personally find the English language to many times richer with beautiful nuances that cannot be found in any other language. For example if we are talking about a persons will as in will and behavior then on can use the following other terms, e.g., volition, conation, intention, purpose, wish, liking, desire, inclination, and disposition to name a few. Are you tired of using love as a term of endearment then fell free to use the following, affection, devotion, and endearment. Then there is physical love (sexual love), ardor that has a romantic ting to it and is rightly under romantic love. The index is extremely easy to use and it is very cleverly index with unifying themes that later subdivide into smaller entities of the topic in question.

Rating:
Summary: I find this book fun... no wait 269.4 amusing... no wait
Review: Everyone braces them selves when my email reaches them. For I love to pack them there words and information found in this action packed Thesaurus. This book is packed with lists of things that you can not live without. I took philosophy in school; but no one told me that there is 17 branches of philosophy and named them. Can you name the common accents and diacritical marks?

It may be possible to live with out this book if you can learn the basic prepositions. Just go around with two word sentences. Just add run in front of many of these words and you have a complete thought: About, above, after, along, around, before, behind, between, by, despite, down, except, for, from, inside, in, into, like, near, of, on, over, through, to, under, until, up, with, without.

Oops. My mistake these are in the Thesaurus also.

Rating:
Summary: Unparagoned Compendium
Review: Excellent, favorable, propitious, good, good as gold, superior, above par, nice, fine, genuine, choice, priceless, unparagoned, giltedged, superfine, superexcellent, first-rate, first-class, high-wrought, exquisite, very best, crack, prime, tiptop, capital, cardinal, inimitable, admirable, estimable, praiseworthy, pleasing, worth its weight in gold, priceless, invaluable, inestimable, precious, exceptional.

Rating:
Summary: I found this thesaurus to be stupendous --
Review: Extraordinary, marvelous, wondrous, astounding, remarkable, outstanding

Rating:
Summary: Hmmmmm....
Review: I don't know what shaggy 911 was thinking when he read this one, but it seemed to me that the author, Rogets, simply recycled the plot of the more popular novel entitled Dictionary(a poor novel in and of itself)! If you are looking for a good suspense thriller, you could do so much better than Thesaurus... you may want to try Stephen King.

Rating:
Summary: GRE!!? Looking for the best thesaurus? Look no further!
Review: I have, like some of my overzealous opposite numbers, gone overboard by going into a spree of pre test consumerism esp. that of books related to GRE. I have bought nearly 4 different thesauri but Barlett's Roget's thesaurus surpasses them all. For example: Crabbed which basically means irratible, ill tempered, spiteful, cranky, pettish, etc. Now, if you search for the meaning of crabbed in merriam websters dictionary (the best available on the planet) it will spit out the meaning as sour or peevish (irratible). But if you try to search for the synonyms list for the word crabbish, no other thesauri, in which happened i happened to check, except Barletts Rogets, had irritable as a synonym in its synonym list for the headword - crabbing. This is one of the several examples which have enraged me enough to discard my various other thesauri in favor of Barletts Rogets Thesaurus.

Rating:
Summary: Traditional Thesaurus at its Best
Review: I was sick of all the thesauruses in my office that are set up in dictionary-alphabetic format and turned to Amazon for the traditional concept-based thesaurus of my youth. I got it with "Bartlett's Roget's Thesaurus."

The indexing alone is well worth the money you'll pay for this, but if that's not enough, you might like the list of categories, (will and behaivior, spatial relations, negotiations & fiscal relations, etc.) that are included both by concepts and alphabetically. In addition, there are a lot of lists included, from breeds of cattle to stations of the cross to varieties of beans. Makes for some interesting reading.

If *that* hasn't convinced you, the actual thesaurus part of it is darn good. Many times I turn to this reference book to prompt creativity, to expand on ideas, etc. The contemporary terms and phrases and relationships between words and concepts are quite good. If you appreciate good resources, this is going to be a great desk item for you.