| THE CATEGORY INDEX is designed to take the user from a synonym paragraph in the main body of the thesaurus to related words of opposite meaning elsewhere in the thesaurus. A category reference, which appears at the end of every synonym paragraph, leads from the main text to the Category Index. |
| favorite |
| ADJECTIVE: |
1. Being a favorite: favored, popular, preferred, well-liked. See LIKE. 2. Given special, usually doting treatment: darling, fair-haired, favored, pet1. See TREAT WELL. |
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| The category reference LIKE is a hypertext link to the entry like in the Category Index. |
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| The lists of entries in the Category Index, such as the one at like, contain words related to the word looked up, in this case favorite. These related words are divided into groups by part of speech. In this list are found such words as the nouns admirer, attraction, and bias and the adjectives agreeable, attractive, and biased. These words are cross-references directing the reader back to entries in the thesaurus. At the entry for the adjective agreeable, for example, the user finds the group of synonyms for agreeable that ends with the category reference LIKE and searches through such synonyms as congenital and good to see if that list contains the desired word. |
| Most category references list two words as headwords, the second being opposite or contrastive in meaning to the first word, as with like, dislike. Under dislike appear words of opposite meaning grouped by part of speech. Looking up the entry for the noun dislike in the thesaurus the user finds the synonyms disinclination, disrelish, distaste, and mislike. |
| One or more additional headwords sometimes appear. For example in some cases there are three groups of words, the third group consisting of words that are neutral in meaning. At excess for example we find the headwords |
| excess, insufficiency, enough |
| The group of words under enough are neutral in meaning. |
| Another type of headword group appears at smells, where the headword smells is followed by good smells, bad smells and smell. |
| Finally, many lists occur with only one headword, such as occurs at the headword words. only a single undifferentiated list of words appears at such an entry. |
| In some cases more than one meaning of a thesaurus entry appears at the same entry and part of speech in the Category Index. This is indicated by a number enclosed in parentheses. For example at sounds noun is found |
| hearing (3) |
| This means that the entry for the noun hearing in the thesaurus contains three meanings with three different synonym lists that fit in the category sounds. |
| The Category Index opens up the thesaurus, offering many more choices than does the traditional alphabetical thesaurus. |
