When someone overuses a thesaurus in an essay or speech to make themselves sound smarter. However, by replacing small words with obscure words they don't really understand, it just makes them sound pretentious and stupid.
But, especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn.
Blood libel? Purport? Looks like Sarah Palin suffers from thesaurusitis.
Blood libel? Purport? Looks like Sarah Palin suffers from thesaurusitis.
by Joyu January 16, 2011
Get the Thesaurusitis mug.When a person decides to improve his/her writing (essays, poetry, etc.) by looking up synonyms in a thesaurus and utilizing words that they think sound nice. In most cases, a person diagnosed with Thesauritis will use the words s/he found incorrectly - therefore making him/her look stupid in front of people with bigger vocabularies.
Thesauritis patient: "I besot you so profusely; all through the ignominious opprobrium and misconstrued paroxysms... my ventricles throb with plasma for you."
You: If you knew what those words meant, you wouldn't have said that.
You: If you knew what those words meant, you wouldn't have said that.
by Waior December 27, 2009
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unnecessarily overchecking words using a thesaurus to find words that make the writer look cleverer than they really are.
as a result, the writer looks somewhat ... silly
as a result, the writer looks somewhat ... silly
by Akula October 18, 2009
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