After surviving a fire, several budget cuts, constant revisions and even the deaths of some of the people who started it - the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary is finally ready for release.

According to some estimates, it contains 600,000 words with 800,000 meanings that have been organized into 230,000 categories - making it twice the size of the current de facto standard - Roger's Thesaurus.

Initiated 44 years ago, the project was the brainchild of English Professor Michael Samuels from the University of Glasgow, who planned to create the perfect companion to the 20-volume Oxford Dictionary. He began by transcribing the information onto slips of paper.

The tedious process continued without interruption until 1978, when the building where the paper slips were stored, caught fire. Miraculously, the slips were inside a metal filing cabinet and survived the damage. However, the researchers were taking no chances after that close call and squirreled away three copies of the transcripts in varied locations.

The transcripts were also stored onto a microfiche and later, as technology advanced, onto computers.

In 1980, just as the tome was close to completion, the editors decided to add new words from the Oxford English Dictionary. This ended up adding an additional 30 years to the project.

The now completed thesaurus comprises of two volumes - the first one containing the actual thesaurus complete with synonyms, while the second volume contains the index. The thesaurus has three sections, containing 354 categories that range from armed hostility to the supernatural.

The current editor, 69-year old Professor Christian Kay has spent almost her entire career on this one project, which she started working on as a research assistant, at the age of 27 - And she is one of the lucky ones, for most of the original founders of the project are dead!

What's next? Entering the data onto the web - but that will have to be done by an entirely new set of word enthusiasts!

source:australiannews.com.au