Thesaurus What?

Thesaurus What?

Imagine me, aged 9; scruffy, argumentative and troublesome. Here is a quick recount of my first ever encounter with a thesaurus…

“Have you ever heard of a thesaurus!” said my, ‘know it all’, classmate.

 “Is that a carnivore or a herbivore?”  I retorted, trying to out manoeuvre her with my intellectual prowess.

Cue the ridicule.

Oh yes, that backfired, and so when I got home I asked my mother, and I was presented with a thesaurus, which (like a dictionary) I couldn’t use, as I couldn’t spell the words to look them up. But now that I’m an adult, and a writer, I use the beloved thesaurus every day and it’s part of my staple survival kit.

Much pain was caused by this little incident, but when my daughter (aged seven) asked me what a thesaurus was yesterday, I had to stop myself from saying, ‘don’t you know , it’s a dinosaur...”