Onomasticon
“Rubbish. It knows nothing about owls.”
Okay … granted, it was a review of a thesaurus — so, an absence, lack, want, paucity, scarcity, shortage, deficit … or even dearth … of owls is not quite as incomprehensible a reproach, criticism or complaint as it might first appear.
Nevertheless, it’s still an odd lament.
Are owls something that one searches for in a thesaurus? Would the plaintiff not have done better to seek help from a dictionary … or even an encyclopaedia … rather than a thesaurus?
Is there even a synonym for ‘owl’?
And, besides: what kind of person needs one in the first place?
The mind boggles!
I’m almost tempted to get it … just so I can whip it out, thrust it at people and say to them “See here … this is my thesaurus — it knows nothing about owls” at opportune moments, when they aren’t expecting it ¹.
—
¹ I rather fancy seeing what I fondly imagine will be the look on their faces, when I do so — I might even keep a league table of how long it takes them to recover and be capable, once more, of speech 😉
