Forty-years in the making, the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, the first historical thesaurus to include almost the entire vocabulary of English from Old English to present day, is finally available.

Features (quoting the website):

· The largest thesaurus resource in the world, covering more than 920,000 words and meanings based on the Oxford English Dictionary
· The very first historical thesaurus to be compiled for any of the world’s languages from medieval times through the present
· Synonyms listed with dates of first recorded use in English, in chronological order, with earliest synonyms first
· For obsolete words, the Thesaurus also includes last recorded use of word
· Uses a thematic system of classification
· Comprehensive index enables complete cross-referencing of nearly one million words and meanings
· Contains a comprehensive sense inventory of Old English
· Includes a free fold-out color chart which shows the top levels of the classification structure
· Made up of two volumes: The main text, comprising numbers sections for semantic categories, and the index, comprising a full A-Z look up of nearly one million lexical items

Kottke says this book is crying out to be online. You can pre-order the 4,448 page book from Powell’s for $422.75.

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