Copymattersblog

The biggest words in the world Friday October 23, 2009

Looking for the right word? You will never be lost again. I recently got excited about the opportunity to possess my very own word, but how about getting on your hands on almost the entire English language? It’s taken more than 40 years of work by a dedicated team and survived the ravages of fire, but earlier this week the world’s largest thesaurus was finally published by the English Language department of Glasgow University. Since 1965 they have been doing their research for the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary. It’s not really the right size for bedtime reading – two hefty volumes covering 4,500 pages. But that’s not suprising with nearly 920,000 words and meanings, organised into more than 236,000 categories and subcategories. So for words from obsolete up to 2003, you’ll never go short again – especially with great ones like the old way of referring to a discontented person (Clue: it’s in the picture).