What is a Thesaurus?

1. What is a Thesaurus? and Why would we use one?

2. What will we learn today? • What a Thesaurus is • How a Thesaurus is arranged • Why we use a Thesaurus • How we use a Thesaurus

3. I can… • Tell what a Thesaurus is and how it is arranged • Tell what a synonym is • Find synonyms in a Thesaurus • Make my writing more interesting by using synonyms

4. What is a Thesaurus? • A Thesaurus is a book of synonyms arranged in alphabetical order. • Synonyms are words that share the same or nearly the same meaning. • A Thesaurus is a tool to help you make your writing interesting. • For example, these words are synonyms for funny and crazy: funny crazy amusing dumb comical foolish hilarious silly humorous absurd

5. Why use a Thesaurus?To make your writing more interesting • Another way to think of a Thesaurus is as a book of word choices. • Understanding how to use word choices, or synonyms, is one of the secrets of good writing. • Maybe your teacher has told you that you use the word weird too often in your writing. • Instead, you could use bizarre, eerie, odd, peculiar, strange, or unnatural to make your writing more interesting and entertaining.

6. Cuddles the Cat • Cuddles ate her cat food. Then she ate the goldfish. Next, she ate a few bugs. For dessert, she ate some flowers. Make these sentences more interesting by using synonyms. • Cuddles gobbled her cat food. Then she devoured the goldfish. Next she munched a few bugs. For dessert, she nibbled some flowers.

7. Paragraph describing what snow is like to someone who has never seen snow Winter is normally a cold time of year, but last January was unbelievably cold. I would go outside wearing my boots and two pairs of socks, and my feet would still feel cold! I couldn’t wait for spring to arrive so the cold weather would end. Winter is normally a cold time of year, but last January was unbelievably frigid. I would go outside wearing my boots and two pairs of socks, and my feet would still feel frozen! I couldn’t wait for spring to arrive so the icy weather would end.

8. Choosing an Appropriate Synonym • Match the part of speech – noun, verb, adjective, adverb Fatnoun grease, oil lard, tallow French fries contain a lot of (fat) grease. adjective heavy, obese, overweight, plump The fish they caught was extremely (fat) plump. • Sometimes we need to add or change a preposition.

9. Choosing the Best Synonym • Think about what you are writing and the context for the word you are using. • Choose the best synonym for the sentence or the context of the story.

10. Remember: • A Thesaurus is a book of synonyms. • These synonyms are arranged in alphabetical order. • We use a Thesaurus to find synonyms to make our writing and speaking more interesting and entertaining. • In choosing a synonym we have to match the part of speech to the word we are replacing. • We also have to find a synonym that doesn’t change the meaning or intent of the sentence. Don’t just choose any synonym… Choose the best synonym for your sentence

11. A Thesaurus is a tool that will help you find the right words to express your thoughts and keep your writing lively and interesting. Use it!