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I would be interested in using a sort of etymological thesaurus. Imagine a normal thesaurus, but with each word in an entry somehow marked to indicate whether it comes ultimately from Latin, German, Norse, Welsh, Irish, etc.

Perhaps this could be done with little icons, or typographical style (Romance words in serif, naturally, Germanic words in sans, Norse in rune-flavoured small caps, Irish in Gaelic script, onomatopoeias and neologisms in Comic Sans). Different but related origins could be conflated or distinguished to some extent (upright serif for Old French, italic serif for Italian and Latin).

Does such a thing exist?

Mostly, I would find this interesting rather than useful. But occasionally, I feel the urge to use a good solid Anglo-Saxon word for something, rather than something French, and this would be the tool for the job. In particular, since I work as a computer programmer, I often find myself needing to name something (a variable, a class, a computer, whatever), and the ability to pick words of different origins for different kinds of things (perhaps Romance for identity classes, Germanic for value classes) would be, if not exactly useful, exactly the kind of pointlessly arch thing which I delight in inflicting on my colleagues.

herisson
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Tom Anderson
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  • Voting to close. This isn't about English language or usage as such - it's a request for analytical tools. Maybe better suited to writers.se – FumbleFingers Sep 07 '11 at 17:33
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    Fair enough. Perhaps you could also go and vote to close http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/1251/is-there-a-general-thesaurus-for-conceptual-fields , http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/24423/which-thesaurus-best-describes-the-differences-between-several-similar-words , http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/16939/english-synonym-online-database , http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/30371/is-there-a-reference-book-that-lists-words-by-usage-or-theme , and http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/1482/what-are-your-favorite-english-language-tools too. – Tom Anderson Sep 07 '11 at 17:37
  • Although that last one is protected - does that make it harder to close? – Tom Anderson Sep 07 '11 at 17:37
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    Questions are "protected" to prevent low-rep users from posting answers, if they're likely to generate large numbers of low-quality answers. Nothing to do with making them "hard to close", which I think just depends on 5 people who have enough rep to cast such a vote actually doing so. Even if 4 more do agree with me, if someone has a good answer for you they can still post it here so you'll get what you want. It's just that no-one will gain rep points from it, which I think is fine. – FumbleFingers Sep 07 '11 at 17:43
  • ...I doubt there is a publication as you seek, but I don't deny I'd be interested if there were. Though since everything tends to be online nowadays, I don't see much problem in looking up etymologies in a separate browser window as required. – FumbleFingers Sep 07 '11 at 17:46
  • Using a separate window would be achingly tedious. Perhaps, if synonymy and etymology data is available online, what's needed is a mashup. Maybe better suited to webapps.se. – Tom Anderson Sep 07 '11 at 18:00

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