Charlton Laird

{{short description|American novelist}}

Charlton Grant Laird (1901–1984) was an American linguist, lexicographer, novelist, and essayist. Laird created the 1971 edition of the Webster's New World Thesaurus that became the standardized edition still used today. During his lifetime, he was probably best known for his language studies: books, textbooks, and reference works elucidating the English language for the layman along with his numerous contributions to dictionaries and thesauruses.

Laird wrote many other works of non-fiction and fiction, including two novels. He also published literary criticism, was a university instructor, and a leading expert and scholar on the life and work of Western novelist (and fellow Nevada writer) Walter Van Tilburg Clark. (see "Selected bibliography" below)

According to Webster's New World Thesaurus, it was Laird who created this "eminently successful work": {{blockquote|Professor Laird's thesaurus, first published in 1971 and revised in 1985 and 1997, has over the years proved itself to be the most usable and useful thesaurus available.{{cite book |

author= Charlton Laird| title= Webster's New World Thesaurus | publisher= Macmillan USA| date= 1999| isbn= 978-0-02-863122-6| pages= vii}}

}}

Laird was born in Nashua, Iowa and received his undergraduate education at the University of Iowa and went on to Columbia, Stanford, and Yale. He taught at Drake University and at the University of Nevada at Reno{{cite web|url= http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/spec-coll/MSC/ToMsC650/MsC646/MsC646_lairdcharlton.htm#biohist|title=PAPERS OF CHARLTON LAIRD|publisher= University of Iowa Libraries|accessdate=2011-01-09}} where he was professor of English from 1945–1968.{{Cite web |url=http://innopac.library.unr.edu/record=b1709513~S0 |title=Charlton Grant Laird Papers at the University of Nevada |access-date=2010-11-29 |archive-date=2019-12-15 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191215070723/https://innopac.library.unr.edu/record=b1709513~S0 |url-status=dead }}

Charlton Laird was inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame in 1990.{{cite web|title=Nevada Writers Hall of Fame: Charlton Laird|url=http://guides.library.unr.edu/nvwriters-hall-of-fame/laird-1990|website=University of Nevada, Reno|accessdate=30 November 2017|archive-date=4 October 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171004035502/http://guides.library.unr.edu/nvwriters-hall-of-fame/laird-1990|url-status=dead}}