Had this Book Club Associates' edition forwarded to me soon after its publication in 1973 when I was living in Scandinavia, short on Markka & pretending to be a budding author. It was an invaluable tool - to find that ultimate keyword your mind has let slip - and has continued to be every year since then although my oeuvre remains perilously slim!
A Thesaurus's role is to complement, not replace the inestimable Dictionary: as R.A. Dutch states in the preface (1962), "It furnishes no labels for 'speech level', for what is scholarly, literary or vulgar, or archaic and obsolete" (and certainly this Edition along with me is bordering on that last vestige of practical usefulness that was my ambition and is now for youthful aspiring writers). ( )

Sorry, I just don't get it, understand it, grasp it, make the connection, dig it, comprehend it.

The reason each word exists is that it is its own thing. By definition the thesaurus is telling you to do something wrong: to replace a word with something that isn't quite right.

I'm not going to say any more, but I DEMAND that you go here and watch/listen to The Thesaurus Song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHDn7_pmRug

It's brilliant, wonderful, fantastic, the best, fabulous....you get the idea. ( )

1991, 10th impression

Most useful little book ( )

Whenever I'm short of something to read, which is often, I end up back inside Roget's Thesaurus. ( )