Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Thesaurus, Second Edition

by Merriam-Webster

Book Overview

Find the right word every time with this indispensable guide! This classic reference is a must-have for every reader and writer. This newly revised and updated edition has been updated to reflect... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0877792690
• Release Date: January 2010
• Publisher: Merriam-Webster, Inc.
• Length: 1162 Pages
• Weight: 3.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.8" x 2.0" x 7.3"

Customer Reviews

Excellent thesaurus

This is an excellent thesaurus.

A good investment

This thesaurus is very helpful. You will be able to find the word you're looking for about 8-9 times out of 10, which is not bad at all. I am an English major and therefore use my thesaurus quite often and I give it a thumbs up. The price is reasonable. The look is professional. It's a great buy!

Merriam -Webster Collegiate Thesaurus

This was a gift for someone that is a senior in highschool.They loved it and it will take them through adulthood.

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Thesaurus

I purchased this reference book at the same time I purchased Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary thinking these books would compliment each other and I was absolutely correct !!! I thought this would be a reference book that would collect dust on the bookshelf but that isn't the case. I have used this reference book more than I thought I would and it has come in handy many times now. You can never have enough reference books in your own private library and this is definitely a book that can only inhance your reference book section of your library. I am very pleased with this purchase and the only thing I regret is not purchasing this book much sooner !!!

good reference

this is a very useful especially if you need to enrich your vocabulary.

The best single tool to improve your writing

Most other dictionary-format thesauri (Roget's II, for instance) simply won't give you what you want on the first try. If, for instance, you want a more decorous word for "smelly", you're brusquely told to "see MALODOROUS". This means that most of the words you are likely to be looking up require a time-wasting two step process: first find the word you want to replace, then find the main entry for that concept. By the time you've finished flipping back and forth through the pages you've forgotten what it is your looking for. The Webster's version is a thousand times more convenient. If you look up a specific word, you're guaranteed to find about a dozen or so of the most common synonyms right there (funky, stinky, rank, etc.). This first entry is probably all you'll need, and it constitutes the main time-saving benefit of this edition. But there's more. The real verbomaniacs among us get referred to the main entry of the concept. Here you'll find the mother lode of words, often numbering into the dozens and ranging from the most commonplace to the ridiculously obscure (e.g. mephitic, olid, stenchful). You'll also find related terms (vile, rotten, pestilential), contrasting terms (fresh, clean, deoderized), and antonyms (fragrent, sweet) all in the same place, just as you would in Roget's conceptually arranged International edition. Like I said, most writers are sure to find what they need on the first try. The only other thesaurus that approaches this one is the Random House Collegiate, but I don't think that one has definitions; this one does. I'm also pretty sure this one has more words than Random House, Roget's 21st Century, or any other. It's also inexpensive for a hardcover, so how can you lose?