Talk:tesauro

RFV discussion: April–June 2020
Moved from RFD.

As per the RAE dictionary the word “tesauro” doesn’t mean thesaurus the way English does. In Spanish the word for thesaurus is “diccionario de sinónimos y antónimos”

Here is what it means according to the RAE (https://dle.rae.es/tesauro):

1. Treasure (dictionary, catalogue)

2. Treasure

Both of these words are classified as obsolete.

If you do a Google search of “tesauro” you will not find any single mention of the word in Spanish literature in which means thesaurus, the only exception being English Wikipedia articles translated to Spanish.

If you search “tesauro” in Google images you won’t find anything remotely related to what you call a thesaurus in English. But you will find results if you search for “diccionario de sinónimos y antónimos”

In Conclusion: Tesauro doesn’t mean thesaurus and the actual word Spanish speakers would use for thesaurus is diccionario de sinónimos y antónimos“

For this reason, the “tesauro” entry should be deleted, at least the Spanish section.


 * Wouldn’it be better to define it as an alternative, obsolete spelling of ? In English, is also an obsolete term for “dictionary”. It acquired its current specific meaning in English only after the publication of  in 1852.  --Lambiam 21:02, 11 April 2020 (UTC)


 * I have cited the sense in question, tagged it as rare and converted the definition to . Nearly all uses of this sense were found in works translated from English, about English-Spanish translation or about software originally written in English, therefore I am fairly certain it is a semantic loanword from English.
 * In the process of looking for citations, it turned out that tesauro is also somewhat common in the sense of thesaurus as used in information science (our current definition 3), which I have added. The RAE dictionary is an excellent resource, but you shouldn’t assume that it contains the entirety of the Spanish lexicon. — Ungoliant (falai) 15:12, 21 April 2020 (UTC)


 * RFV-kept. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 06:02, 15 June 2020 (UTC)