Discussion Groups / English Usage / July 2009

Quoth HVS <usenet@REMOVETHISwhhvs.co.uk>, and I quote:

It's a long time since I first heard about the Glasgow thesaurus,
and it's great to see that it is finally to be published.

When I studied the history of the English language at Cambridge
back in nineteen-hundred-and-froze-to-death, my teacher was a
wonderful man named John Bromwich who was also working on a
similar project. I wonder what ever became of that? I found the
following reference from 1967 online:

"A historical Thesaurus of English is being compiled on a
long-term basis by Professor Samuel at the University of Glasgow;
and another, compiled by John Bromwich, is being put on magnetic
tape at the Linguistics Computation Centre, Cambridge
University."

John Bromwich was a wonderful character and the glimpses we got
of his one-man historical thesaurus were fascinating. His ex-wife
Rachel taught me Old Irish and Medieval Welsh.

When I grew a beard I became the double of John Bromwich's
computer expert. We were so alike that even his wife said hello
to me one day.

To get back to your link, there's an interesting comment on the
article by a Scotsman who is angry at the spelling "Gallic" and
misinforms us that the expression "smashing" comes from Gaelic
" 's math sin" meaning "that's good".