How to Use the Thesaurus Correctly, According to Martin Amis
Martin Amis uses a thesaurus. The British writer and critic is known to be somewhat of a snob, and the thesaurus is known as a dangerous tool abused by amateur writers trying to appear smart, but as you probably guessed, Amis uses her thesaurus in a very different way than a college freshman. In the video above Big Think (via Open Culture ) he describes the best way to use the thesaurus.
The danger of the thesaurus, which millions of articles have warned about writing style , is that you can substitute an inappropriate word for a suitable word. You can replace the perfectly good word “writer” with the pretentious “scribe” or replace “stop” with “stop” or some other nonsense from your term paper.
You can do this because you want to sound smarter, because you didn’t know that simpler words are usually better. Or you can do it because you are afraid to use the same word multiple times in the same work.
This second habit – when you replace each occurrence of a word with a different synonym so as not to repeat the same word multiple times – is called “elegant variation,” not a compliment. This is common in bad journalism, blog posts, and rewritten Yelp reviews by people who think they’ll write a book one day. Amis specifically warns against this. (Just use the same word multiple times; readers won’t notice the repetition as often as you do. Or use pronouns.)
Instead, Amis uses a thesaurus to match the style and rhythm of his words. He may find his current word too long or too short for the sentence in which it is contained. Or he may want to avoid awkward rhyme or alliteration. He points to Vladimir Nabokov, who changed the English title of his novel, An Invitation to an Execution, to an invitation to an execution . Say both out loud and you will hear improvement.
He also double-checks his usage by looking up the words in the dictionary — not necessarily to check their definition, but to check their etymology. For example, he says that the word ” lapid” in dilapidated comes from the Latin word for stone, so while it may refer to a dilapidated house, he will not mean a dilapidated hedge.
You don’t have to be as careful as Amis with your choice of words. But if you really want to write better, pay more attention to the rhythm of your words and study their usage and etymology. Your thesaurus and dictionary are just one right click away – use them wisely.