A thesaurus is a tool you can use to search for synonyms and antonyms of other words. How many times have you struggled to find the best word to describe a feeling, a scene, or an impression? A thesaurus is used to help you become more precise (if you are working on a technical paper) and descriptive (if you are writing a creative piece) in your writing. It provides a list of suggested replacements for any word you have in mind. The thesaurus helps you select the very best word choice.

Today, January 18th is National Thesaurus Day, your opportunity to reintroduce yourself to that best friend of writers. Whether you’re looking for a new word to spice up your vocabulary, or looking for precisely the right nuance to add to a sentence or phrase, a Thesaurus is there to help you. While many of us don’t use the great expanse of verbiage that’s available to us, the expanse of language really gives us an amazing ability to express ourselves with beauty and precision.

We have got Peter Mark Roget to thank for this wonderful book. Roget started the book in 1848 and finished in 1852 with 15,000 words. 

We love a flick through a thesaurus but we also use Thesaurus.com the world’s largest free online thesaurus brought to you by Dictionary.com.

For over 20 years, Thesaurus.com has been helping millions of people improve their mastery of the English language and find the precise word with over 3 million synonyms and antonyms. It's come a long way since Roget! You can sign up to Word of the Day which is a great way to build your vocabulary with new words, definitions, and origin stories every day of the week.

National Thesaurus Day gives us an opportunity to honour (praise, appreciate, celebrate, admire, applaud) the book that provides us with synonyms so that we can enhance our writing today and everyday.