This week’s Friday round-up post features two items about thesauri (or shall I say thesauruses? It appears I’m not alone with this kind of plural problem. Toyota is still undecided and is asking people to vote on the plural of Prius). The first bit of news this week was Thesaurus Day on 18th January, and the second a Twitter tool called Thsrs (= The Shorter Thesaurus). Macmillan Dictionary’s built-in (and completely free!) online thesaurus doesn’t abbreviate words for Twitter, but it is a truly fantastic language and teaching tool (as this page explains in more detail). If, for example, you look up synonyms for excellent, you get a short definition for each of the possible words, not just a list. And if you’d like to explore further, you only need to click on ‘more’ for a complete list with useful mini-definitions. Long live the thesaurus!
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The different plurals mentioned above have caused some unexpected problems. To see how some writers end up with thesaurusi, have a look at this post: http://english-jack.blogspot.com/2009/02/thesaurusi-or-how-descriptivist-can-you.html
And, BTW, Thsrs (= The Shorter Thesaurus) is too cute for words.
Thank you for sharing that link and story! Interestingly, over on the Toyota site, ‘prii’ seems to be the most popular choice (40%), followed by ‘priuses’ (27%)… I’ve no idea how many people have actually voted of course.