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A dictionary is a list of words, arranged alphabetically, with their meanings. A thesaurus is a list of meanings, arranged by concept, with the words that express those meanings.

If you find a copy of Roget's Thesaurus (I mean the real Roget's Thesaurus), you will find that the first entry is "Existence" (under which are listed words such as reality, actuality, absolute, true and so on) and the second is "Inexistence". Peter Mark Roget, who wrote it, said in his introduction:

The present Work is intended to supply, with respect to the English language, a desideratum hitherto unsupplied in any language; namely, a collection of the words it contains and of the idiomatic combinations peculiar to it, arranged, not in alphabetical order as they are in a Dictionary, but according to the ideas which they express. (Emphasis in original)

Roget considered that his most important creation was the rubric which categorized the meanings of all words and which was the organizing principle of the thesaurus. However, many people found the thesaurus hard to work with. Rather than start with the idea they wanted to express, they preferred to start with a similar word and look for synonyms. As a result people were looking for a Dictionary of Synonyms in which words were listed alphabetically. Nowadays what is sold under the name of "Roget's Thesaurus" is usually not in fact a thesaurus at all, but a Dictionary of Synonyms (and often of Antonyms). Roget would turn over in his grave.

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