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Historical Thesaurus of English

Historical Thesaurus of English is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Historical Thesaurus of English rather than just read about it. In short: The Historical Thesaurus of English (HTE) is the largest thesaurus in the world. It is called a historical thesaurus as it arranges the whole vocabulary of English, from the earliest written records in Old English to the present, according to the first documented occurrence of a word in the entire history of the English language.

Key takeaways

Historical Thesaurus of English belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Historical Thesaurus of English to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Historical Thesaurus of English from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Historical Thesaurus of English (HTE) is the largest thesaurus in the world. It is called a historical thesaurus as it arranges the whole vocabulary of English, from the earliest written records in Old English to the present, according to the first documented occurrence of a word in the entire history of the English language. The HTE was conceived and begun in 1965 by the English Language & Linguistics department of the University of Glasgow, who have ever since continued to compile the thesaurus. From the 1980s onwards the project was moved from paper-based records to a computer database. Today, the HTE is available to the public online, but a print version, the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (HTOED), was published in 2009.

Main project: The Historical Thesaurus of English (HTE) The Historical Thesaurus of English (HTE) is a complete database of all the words in the Oxford English Dictionary and other dictionaries (including Old English), 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 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. As the HTE website states, "in addition to providing hitherto unavailable information for linguistic and textual scholars, the Historical Thesaurus online is a rich resource for students of social and cultural history, showing how concepts developed through the words that refer to them."

Structure 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. The second order categories are:

History The ambitious project was announced at a 1965 meeting of the Philological Society by its originator, Michael Samuels. Work on the HTE started in the same year. In 2017, the University of Glasgow was awarded the Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher Education for the HTE. A second edition of the online HTE is currently in progress and is expected to be launched in late 2020. Work is released on the freely-available HTE website when available.

Print edition: Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (HTOED)

On 22 October 2009, after 44 years of work, version 1.0 of the HTE was published by Oxford University Press in a two-volume slipcased set as the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (HTOED). The two hardcover volumes together total nearly 4,500 pages.

References

External links "Search". The Historical Thesaurus of English. University of Glasgow.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Historical Thesaurus of English

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Historical Thesaurus of English claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Historical Thesaurus of English before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Historical Thesaurus of English ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Historical Thesaurus of English

In research: Historical Thesaurus of English appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Historical Thesaurus of English in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Historical Thesaurus of English is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Books about the English language, Classification systems, History of the English language, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Historical Thesaurus of English outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Historical Thesaurus of English in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Historical Thesaurus of English means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Historical Thesaurus of English out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Historical Thesaurus of English in simple terms?

Why does Historical Thesaurus of English matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Historical Thesaurus of English?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Historical Thesaurus of English.