“… I’d be a Thesaurus.” I exclaimed after saying and defining a large word for a group of friends. While the group was laughing, one stopped, looking almost puzzled, she turned to me and said, “I didn’t know that the Thesaurus was a dinosaur!”
O sweet mischief and naivety – I couldn’t resist carrying this one further…
“Oh yes,” I replied. “Do you know how up here in Canada, every box of tissues is called a box of Kleenex or how in the south of the US, all soda or pop is called Coke?”
“Yes,” she continued… intrigued by the story.
“Well, up until the 1960s, the thesaurus was known as the “Expanded Lexicon of Antonyms and Synonyms.” That was when the Roget’s Expanded Lexicon of Antonyms and Synonyms was published and the publisher used the prehistoric ancestor of the kangaroo, the Thesaurus, as their logo. From this day forward, every Expanded Lexicon of Antonyms and Synonyms was called a Thesaurus.”
“Wait a minute…” she interjected. “Isn’t a kangaroo a mammal?”
“No,” I responded. “Kangaroos are marsupials.”
“Oh! A marsupial!” she exclaimed. “I know what that is – that’s an animal with more than one leg, right?”
At this point, I cannot contain my laugher… nor can the others who have been busting a gut this entire time.
I recover my composure and continue the lesson. “That’s right. However, the Thesaurus was not a marsupial, if you look closely at the logo, the animal only has one leg…hence, and the Thesaurus only had one leg. A later evolution would turn the Thesaurus into the kangaroo.”
She was pretty crushed to find out that the Thesaurus was not actually a dinosaur, but was concerned that one of our other friends was allergic to ice cubes and convinced that tires need to be rotated or they’ll go square.
