embles the old maps of Africa in which the interior
was filled with cloudy spaces, where modern discovery has revealed great
lakes, fertile plains, and mighty rivers. One main office of a book of
synonyms is to reveal to such persons the unsuspected riches of their
own language; and when a series of words is given them, from which they
may choose, then, with intelligent choice of words there comes of
necessity a clearer perception of the difference of the ideas that are
to be expressed by those different words. Thus, copiousness and
clearness of language tend directly to affluence and precision of
thought.

Hence there is an important use for mere lists of classified synonyms,
like Roget's Thesaurus and the works of Soule and Fallows. Not one in a
thousand of average students would ever discover, by independent study
of the dictionary, that there are fifteen synonyms for _beautiful_,
twenty-one for _beginning_, fifteen for _benevolence_, twenty for
_friendly_, and thirty-seven for _pure_. The mere mention of such
numbers opens vistas of possible fulness, freedom, and variety of
utterance, which will have for many persons the effect of a revelation.

But it is equally important to teach _that synonyms are not identical_
and to explain why and how they differ. A person of extensive reading
and study, with a fine natural sense of language, will often find all
that he wants in the mere list, which recalls to his memory the
appropriate word. But for the vast majority there is needed some work
that compares or contrasts synonymous words, explains their differences
of meaning or usage, and shows in what connections one or the other may
be most fitly used. This is the purpose of the present work, to be a
guide to selection from the varied treasures of English speech.

This work treats within 375 pages more than 7500 synonyms. It has been
the study of the author to give every definition or distinction in the
fewest possible words consistent with clearness of statement, and this
not merely for economy of space, but because such condensed statements
are most easily apprehended and remembered.

The method followed has been to select from every group of synonyms one
word, or two contrasted words, the meaning of which may be settled by
clear definitive statement, thus securing some fixed point or points to
which all the other words of the group may be referred. The great source
of vagueness, error, and perplexity in many discussio