Is there something like a thesaurus that offers terms more often used in the past?
For instance, I beg you would, in Shakespearean times, be prithee, while chicks during the 1920s would be dolls.
Meta: Seeing how the question on a thesaurus with archaic and obsolete words and several other thesaurus-related questions have been closed, I fear this one might be, too. However, I am hoping it’s more on-topic. Please, if this must be closed, at least tell me where I should go to receive a good answer.
Answer
There is! It’s the Glasgow Historical Thesaurus of English, the world’s only historical thesaurus. We published it through OUP in 2009 as the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, and is also freely available online at http://www.glasgow.ac.uk/thesaurus – we also provide a whole bunch of additional information and visualisations there, too.
We produced it at the University of Glasgow and it’s the work of over 230 people, taking approximately 320,000 person-hours to complete – it began in 1965. I hope you find it useful!
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : Ky. , Answer Author : Marc Alexander