The Historical Thesaurus of English (HTE) is the largest thesaurus in the world, conceived and compiled by the English Language Department of the University of Glasgow. The HTE is a complete database of all the words in the second edition of The Oxford English Dictionary, arranged by semantic field and date. In this way, the HTE arranges the whole vocabulary of English, from the earliest written records in Old English to the present, alongside types and dates of use. It is the first historical thesaurus to be compiled for any of the world's languages and contains 800,000 meanings for 600,000 words, within 230,000 categories, covering more than 920,000 words and meanings, and making it double the size of Roget’s version.^[1] As its website states, "the Thesaurus will be equally valuable in linguistic studies, where it will contribute essential information to the study of meaning and change of meaning, and will also be relevant in such fields as the history of ideas and cultural history."^[2]

Work on the HTE started in 1965 and it was published on 22 October 2009, after 44 years of work.^[3] It will consist of two slipcased hardcover volumes, totaling nearly 4,000 pages. It will also eventually be available online, linked to the Oxford English Dictionary.^[1]

[edit] Main sections

The work is divided into three main sections: the External World, the Mind, and Society. These are broken down into successively narrower domains. The text eventually discriminates more than 236,000 categories.^[4] The second order categories are:^[5]

Section I The External World 1. The Earth 2. Life 3. Physical sensibility 4. Matter 5. Existence 6. Relative properties 7. The Supernatural

Section II The Mind 1. Soul, spirit, mind 2. Emotion/feeling 3. Judgement, opinion 4. Aesthetics 5. Will/faculty of will 6. Expectation 7. Having/possession 8. Languages

Section III Society 1. Society/life in association with others 2. Inhabiting/dwelling 3. Relations between social groups 4. Authority 5. Law 6. Education 7. Religion 8. Communications 9. Travel/travelling 10. Work - Serious occupation 11. Leisure/The Arts

[edit] References

1. ^ ^{a b} http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article6644646.ece
2. ^ "Further Information about the Thesaurus," Historical Thesaurus of English website, Faculty of Arts, University of Glasgow.
3. ^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/oxfordshire/8136122.stm
4. ^ Historical Thesaurus is a masterpiece worth waiting 40 years for
5. ^ Historical Thesaurus of English

[edit] External links

• Menu page for the Historical Thesaurus of English, allowing one to search the thesaurus for synonyms.
• A Historical Thesaurus of English (HTE) homepage, including a limited test website and the complete searchable Thesaurus of Old English (Roberts and Kay 1995, 2000).