Crossword Genius

Synonym books, article mother leaves Japanese warrior with (8)

Ross

I believe the answer is:

thesauri

I'm a little stuck... Click here to teach me more about this clue!

'synonym books' is the definition.
'thesauri' can be an answer for 'books' (thesaurus is a kind of book). I am unsure of the 'synonym' bit.

'article mother leaves japanese warrior with' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite see how this works, but
'article' could be 'the' (the 'definite article' part of speech) and 'the' is located in the answer.
This explanation may well be incorrect...

Can you help me to learn more?

(Other definitions for thesauri that I've seen before include "Dictionaries" , "Word founts" , "References" , "they may aid writers" , "Reference works providing synonyms" .)

I've seen this clue in The Hindu.
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