http://www.the-tls.co.uk/this_week/story.aspx?story_id=2106394

The safest storehouse for writers to fetch words from is their own head. In it are the words and phrases, read and heard, that have struck or pleased them. Among these will be the colloquialisms, the neologisms, the new metaphors hatched out of current events, that are unlikely to be in any existing list. Only the treasury of the mind can supply just those turns of phrase with which writers express their own thoughts and not somebody else’s.

onomasiological?

onomasiology - the study of the principles of nomenclature, esp. with regard to regional, social, or occupational variation. Hence onomasiologic, onomasiological adjs., onomasiologist.

My old man's an onomasiologist
What do you think about that?
He wears an onomasiologist's collar,
He wears an onomasiologist's hat.
He wears an onomasiologist's raincoat,
He wears an onomasiologist's shoes,
And every Saturday evening,
He reads the Onomasiologist's News.

must have been communion today...

So was your uncle. They were a yoke o' onomasiologists.

a yoke o' onomasiologists.

I rest my case.

Lord have mercy, you-all: this was a great* article, and y'all have completely ignorified it!

*For ex.: all its chosen words under a thousand headings marked off in six main classes (abstract relations, space, organic matter, intellect, volition, and sentient and moral powers), with a long alphabetical index at the back. What an odd (to me) way to organize something!

And, about Roget: In plain terms, he was an amateur. He was a doctor who liked making lists, and his longest list was of words. His purposes were not scholarly; they were practical. Words were tools. He did think there was one high purpose the Thesaurus might serve: since its plan could be applied to any language, the work might ease the growth of a universal language. But his main aim was simply to help people compose the written or the spoken word well.

The word welkin sent me on a Search--what fun this thread was, and is to read again. Guess what? Flatlander beat us ALL to "bling-bling"!
http://wordsmith.org/board/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=words&Number=16695

that's a fun read, Jackie. thanks!

onomasiological?

In lexicography, there are two broad kinds of dictionaries: those based on onomasiological principles (i.e., based on semantic fields and shared properties of meaning, aka thesauri) and semasiological principles (i.e., based on the form of the words or on orthographic or phonological considerations, aka your garden-variety dictionary).

On lexicography as a discipline, you could do worse than finding and reading Ladislav Zgusta's Manual of Lexicography, Mouton, 1971.

Online, I find this page:

http://coral.lili.uni-bielefeld.de/EAGLES/WP5/termdeliv97/node13.html

Those familiar with object-oriented programming may find the discussion of the three major types of relation in onomasiologicy interesting: i.e., taxonomy (is-a), mereonomy (has-a), and predication (has-prop).

<<Words were tools.>>

The more I ponder that one, the more obscure its meaning. Although there is, I believe, a utilitarian view, which holds that language has meaning insofar as it is understood, i.e, is useful. Anyway, if, as it seems, no one actually uses his thesaurus, except to sell or poke fun at, there is something Keatonesque in the practical doctor's gathering tools to render them useless.

no one actually uses his thesaurus, except to sell or poke fun at

I will use a thesaurus if the word that comes to mind is not quite the right one but the right one doesn't come tripping off my tongue. I'll know it when I see it.

I'll know it when I see it.

Yes, I use my thesaurus the same way. I wouldn't pluck an unknown word out of it and plop it into a sentence, but sometimes the creative fires can be stoked by checking out a list of similar words with different shades of meaning. I especially like the one built into M$ Word for this, actually -- you can search through it in tree-fashion (i.e. clicking on one of the words in the list brings up the list for that word, which may be slightly different from the last list you were looking at).

Jackie -- No doubt the only time I've ever won any bling-related competition. Sadly, my connection to bleeding-edge urban slang (my brother) is now a landlord in the 'burbs, and engaged to be married, so I'm not nearly as up-to-date as I used to be. Now that people like me (and my formerly hip brother) are casually tossing words like "bling" and "crunk" around, I'm sure there are new words that have replaced them in the urban lingo; as it was, as it is, as it always will be.

Toss it my way, Flat my homie, I'm still in the dark.

There's some dispute over the meaning of "crunk". Some suggest it simply means "very intoxicated" (an intensified form of "drunk"), I prefer the more general, positive definition that is trickier to define.

Essentially, like the cool-groovy-bad-dope-phat continuum, it means "really good", but it has a more specialized usage. An analogy might be that to say a club/bar/party is "getting crunk" means that the "joint is jumping" in an earlier parlance. It means that that intangible matrix of people/music/libation has reached its peak and everyone can really start to enjoy themselves. I'm familiar with the term mostly through hip-hop and rap music, as the establishments I find myself in these days tend to be not so much "crunk" as "toddler-friendly".

Cranking up the music - Crunk up the party! Ablaut in the making, what!?

Nice one F; I too hadn't heard this before.

>>>as the establishments I find myself in these days tend to be not so much "crunk" as "toddler-friendly".

Aye, it happens to the best of us F. But (sounding like an old biddy here) take advantage of those days, cause soon-enough, toddlers turn into teens and they have absolutely no wish to go anywhere with Mom&Dad - who have magically become boring, by the way.

Kinda like saying the craic is good, sounds to me...

take the time to croodle with your kids, Flats...