Oxford Paperback Thesaurus

Also in paperback comes the Oxford Paperback Thesaurus. You get a lot for your money: it lists over 300,000 synonyms and antonyms, so it includes all the words your are likely to need for ordinary use.

For each entry, the list of synonyms starts with the most useful one and then works its way through the others. So the entry for ‘hapless’ for example starts with ‘unfortunate’ – which most of us would use as a synonym – then twelve other suggestions later works its way through to ‘woebegone’, which we could well use in certain contexts. Finally, the entry suggests ‘lucky’ as an opposite of hapless. So you can turn to the entry for ‘lucky’ and you will find ten suggestions that would stand as antonyms for ‘hapless’.

You also get a centre section with thematic lists of subjects from amphibians to war. Under the former you get a list of thirteen amphibians and under the latter you get 74 different types of soldier.