10 Best Thesauruses Books 2024 in the United States

A thesaurus is the opposite of a dictionary. When you find a word, but you're not sure what it means, you look it up in a dictionary. A thesaurus is useful when you have an idea, and the word you want to say is on the tip of your tongue. You want to find the word that matches. Or, maybe you're writing something, and the word you chose doesn't exactly fit in the context of what you're writing. A thesaurus will help you find words with almost the same meaning, but that will fit into what you are writing. A thesaurus can also supply antonyms—words that mean the opposite of what you have in mind. Nowadays thesauruses are specialized for particular purposes. Here is a guide to some of the best thesauruses on the market.

Thesauruses arrange words according to some sort of scheme. There are two major schemes that are in use:

• Category Format: Roget's Thesaurus (the first thesaurus of the English language) divided its entries conceptually, by categories. For example, he divided the entries by body and senses, feelings, place, measure and shape, etc. This is considered useful to search by idea, rather than by word.

• Dictionary Format: This system arranges the words in alphabetical format. This is found to save time over the category-format thesaurus, where you have to look up your word in an index, and then you have to find the usage you want. Alphabetical order saves eliminates that extra step of searching through the index.  

Based on all the consumers' reviews we've scanned, these are the top things they mentioned about their new stuff:

• Book version, Kindle version, or on-line version?: Since there are on-line thesauruses nowadays, and you have a thesaurus in Word already, you might think that having it in book form might not be so useful. But people find the book version the easiest to use. The Kindle version was found not so convenient—you will have trouble “turning pages” to get to the main entry. Doing a word search electronically on Kindle will give you every occurrence of the word in the book—which is not useful in this case.

• Examples of Usage: Some thesauruses also provide a sentence that illustrates how to use the words, as well as hints on how to choose the right word. That's a big help—it can avoid a lot of embarrassing mistakes from using the wrong word. Some even provide illuminating quotes from great historical personalities.

• Font size: The size of the print is important even in a reference book—it's worth taking it into consideration. Big print will be easier to search and easier to find.

• Spicing up bland writing: You don't want to use the same word repeatedly. A good thesaurus can help you with word variety. Also, if you are of a poetic inclination, some thesauruses are designed (such as “The Thinker's Thesaurus”) will help you find more picturesque usages for words.

• Number of entries: Generally, you'll assume that the bigger a reference book is, the more comprehensive it is. For example, the alphabetically-arranged “The Synonym Finder” has four times more entries than Roget's Thesaurus. That makes it better for finding synonyms and word alternatives. But the Roget's is preferred because of how it divides the different entries according to their sense, associating the words with their alternatives. That made up for the fewer net entries in the Roget's Thesaurus.

• Index: A synonym finder is alphabetically arranged, so there is no need for an index. The conceptually-arranged thesauruses will have an index or Word Finder that helps you locate the words.

• Antonyms: Sometimes you don't remember the word that you want to use, but you do remember the opposite of what you want to say. To provide for cases like that, it's best to get a thesaurus that provides antonyms as well.

The Emotion Thesaurus was written by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi. This particular thesaurus is designed to help a writer associate body language cues, thoughts, and visceral responses for each emotion. They also have similar thesauruses on positive and negative traits, and for urban and rural settings.

The Synonym Finder was written by J. I. Rodale. It is a thesaurus that is alphabetically arranged. It has over 1 million synonyms, and includes words that have entered English recently, including slang and informal expressions.

Merriam-Webster's Dictionary and Thesaurus combines the functions of a dictionary and a thesaurus, both arranged alphabetically. It has 60,000 dictionary entries and 13,500 thesaurus entries.

The Thinker's Thesaurus was written by Peter E. Meltzer. It proposes sophisticated alternatives to common, everyday words. It is a means for widening our vocabulary. It also gives examples of how to use the word in context.

Roget's Super Thesaurus is a modern, expanded edition of Peter Mark Roget's Thesaurus, which was the first thesaurus every published. The entries are arranged conceptually rather than alphabetically, and distinctions are drawn between similar words.