The Thesaurus linguae Latinae is the first comprehensive dictionary of ancient Latin; • it is compiled on the basis of all Latin texts surviving from antiquity (until AD 600), both literary and non-literary • for less common words it cites every attestation, for the rest (those marked with an asterisk) an instructive and representative sample • it records all meanings (including technical usages) and all constructions • it documents peculiarities of inflection, spelling, and prosody • it supplies information about the etymology of the Latin words and their survival in the Romance languages, contributed by recognised authorities in the fields of Indo-European and Romance studies • it collects the comments of ancient sources on the word in question

The Thesaurus therefore offers for every Latin word a comprehensive, richly documented picture of its possibilities and history – not only for Latin scholars, but also for scholars of the various branches of ancient studies and for related disciplines.