Roget

Roget refers to Peter Mark Roget (1779–1869), a British physician and lexicographer best known for creating Roget's Thesaurus.

In 1852 he published Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, Classified and Arranged so as to Facilitate the Expression of Ideas and Sentiments in Pleasant and Useful Language. The work proposed a method for finding words by concept rather than by alphabetical order, organizing entries into a hierarchical taxonomy of classes, sections, and paragraphs to group related ideas and terms.

Roget's Thesaurus popularized semantic organization of vocabulary and influenced later reference works and language teaching. It has undergone numerous revisions and editions, including modern Roget's International Thesaurus, and remains widely used by writers, editors, and students. Although it complements dictionaries, it is not a dictionary of definitions; rather, it provides lists of related terms and nuances of meaning that vary by context.

Beyond the Thesaurus, Roget's work helped spur interest in semantic networks and taxonomy in lexicography. The name Roget has since become closely associated with a categorized collection of synonyms and related words.