An alert yesterday from Ernesto Cuba about the Homosaurus project: an LGBT thesaurus, with a portmanteau name
homosaurus = homo(sexual) + thesaurus — thesaurus from Ancient Greek, meaning ‘treasure, storehouse’
and a logo featuring a mascot apatosaurus (aka brontosaurus):
(#1) The Homosaurus mascot is a huge but herbivorous (hence unthreatening, user-friendly) dinosaur, and it comes with an accompanying Pride rainbow
— all these creatures with names incorporating the formative saur(us) (ultimately from Greek again, and meaning ‘lizard, reptile’ ), utterly unrelated to thesaurus but irresistible as a source of verbal and visual play, as in #1.
The project. From the website:
Welcome to the Homosaurus! The Homosaurus is an international [AZ: and therefore cross-linguistic] linked data vocabulary of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) terms. This vocabulary is intended to function as a companion to broad subject term vocabularies, such as the Library of Congress Subject Headings. Libraries, archives, museums, and other institutions are encouraged to use the Homosaurus to support LGBTQ research by enhancing the discoverability of their LGBTQ resources.
I haven’t used the Homosaurus, I’m just noting its enjoyable name and mascot. And the fact that its name is arthrous, with the definite article built in, like the name of a project or scheme (the Dewey Decimal System, the Enigma Project, the Schartz-Metterklume Method) or a creature name considered as a genus (the three-toed sloth is an arboreal mammal).
More sauruses. From my 10/07/12 posting “Thesaurus rex”:
Mentioned in passing on the public radio show Sez You! …, the punning Thesaurus rex. Often played with, as in this children’s book:
(#2)
And in this cartoon:
(#3)
Earlier postings featured portmanteaus involving Tyrannosaurus: Trannysaurus here; fagosaurus, gayosaurus, homosaurus, and pansysaurus here.
