From Lexico, Inc

Dr. Aref Assaf
President

American Arab Forum of New Jersey
42 E. Main Street
Denville, NJ 07834

Office: (973) 960-2673
Fax: (973) 983-9669

August 23, 2005

Dr. Assaf,

Thank you for taking the time to contact us about our inclusion of the term street
Arab in Roget’s New Millennium Thesaurus at Thesaurus.com. We take your
concerns very seriously and we are sorry we have offended you. We abhor the use
of racial and ethnic slurs and there was no intention on our part to be racist or to
perpetuate racism.

Thesaurus.com is intended to be a guide to contemporary English usage. In our
efforts to make the reference as comprehensive as possible, antiquated terms that
are no longer used in modern English are sometimes included. The term in
question was used in nineteenth century English to describe homeless children
who roamed the streets as a nomadic way of life, and it is found in popular
literature of the times, such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s tales of Sherlock Holmes.
The English language has changed along with American culture in the last hundred
years and this term is no longer in common use. Since our aim with the thesaurus
is to reflect current usage, we acknowledge that the inclusion of this term was an
error. It is our policy to correct errors as quickly as possible, and when we were
notified of this error we corrected it on the site immediately.

We are also working very quickly to review our editorial systems to ensure that our
policies are implemented consistently. If there are any further questions or
concerns, please feel free to contact me directly.

Sincerely,


Brian Kariger
CEO
Lexico Publishing Group

Lexico Publishing Group, LLC
65 Pine Ave, #319 Long Beach, CA 90802 Main: (562) 432-3700 Fax: (562) 432-7743