This work lists almost 1500 roots of academic, professional and technical words. This is not a thesaurus in the common sense. Unlike the familiar collection of synonyms, this thesaurus gathers words with the same root words with similar meaning. The authors have distinguished a variety of these word elements and given them technical names, such as Simple Root, Prefixed Root, Leading Root Compound, and Trailing Root Compound. A glance down the alphabetical listings of a dictionary suggest the links between words like gametangium, gametophyte and gamophobia, but how is one to recognize the relationship between monogamy and gametangium inasmuch as these words do not appear near each other in the dictionary? Unlike a dictionary, this thesaurus makes such links visible within a single entry.
