Does an etymological thesaurus exist? [closed]
There is such a resource, but it's not restricted to English. Bibliographic reference:
- Carl Darling Buck, A Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal Indo-European Languages: A Contribution to the History of Ideas
From the Preface:
How do we get our ideas?
The kind of thinking that distinguishes man from brute has been built up by and is dependent upon the use of symbols. Since vocal utterance attained a higher development than gesture as a means of communication, these symbols are, in fact, the words.
... The history of ideas is embodied in the history of the words used to express them.
It's big -- 1555 pages in the original, though only a quarter of that in the paperback. It's organized into 22 chapters, by topic:
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(1) The Physical World in Its Larger Aspects
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(2) Mankind: Sex, Age, Family Relationship
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(3) Animals
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(4) Parts of the Body; Bodily Functions and Conditions
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(5) Food and Drink; Cooking and Utensils
...
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(12) Spatial Relations: Place, Form Size
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(13) Quantity and Number
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(14) Time
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(15) Sense Perception
...
- (20) Warfare
- (21) Law
- (22) Religion and Superstition
Each chapter lists from 50 to 100 ideas, and for each one provides all the words for it, in -- as the title says -- the principal Indo-European languages, viz:
Ancient Greek, Modern Greek, Latin, Italian, French, Spanish, Rumanian, Old Irish, Modern Irish, Welsh, Breton, Gothic, Old Norse, Danish, Swedish, Old English, Middle English, Modern English, Dutch, Old High German, Middle High German, Modern German, Lithuanian, Latvian, Old Church Slavonic, Czech, Serbo-Croatian, Polish, Russian, Sanskrit, and Avestan.
After the word list for each idea (Buck uses the term 'notion'), there is a page or more of detailed discussion going over the different words and where they came from -- typically 3 or 4 different PIE roots are involved for each idea, over the different histories of each language. Everything is covered.
There's nothing else like it, it's utterly fascinating -- if you like details -- and it's now available in a 4-to-1 reduced paperback, so it's portable. (I also notice that it's now available in an ebook, but I have no experience with the interface.)