MAIN and SECONDARY ENTRIES: THE ONE ARBITRARY RULE

Ideally, a work such as this should be free of all arbitrary restraints and curtailments. In practice, however, its editors found that one rule was essential: No word may appear in more than one list at a main or secondary entry. For example, nice is a synonym at pleasant adjective 1:

Entry Word: pleasant
Function: adjective
1 highly acceptable to the mind or senses <a pleasant personality> <a pleasant respite>
Synonyms agreeable, congenial, favorable, good, grateful, gratifying, nice, pleasing, pleasurable, pleasureful, welcome

However, nice can also mean "mild," "clement," or "pleasing" as in "the nice weather of late spring" or "the nice old days of the past," or it can mean "fitting," "appropriate," or "suitable," as in "the nice clothes she wears" or "not a nice word to use in church." As such, there is a basis for entering nice as a related word as well as a synonym at pleasant 1. And nice can also mean "most inappropriate," "unpleasant," "unattractive," or "treacherous," as in "got himself in a nice fix." As such, it could also be construed as both a contrasted word and an antonym at pleasant 1. Obviously, the thesaurus user would not be helped by an entry showing any word in such an involved relationship with itself.

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