Contradiction in term

In the June 14, 2009 issue of The New York Times Magazine, William Safire writes: "That calls for a thesaurus, which Webster's New World College Dictionary defines as 'a book containing a store of words, specif., a book of synonyms and antomynms.' (The New World guys chop off the ically; maybe this lexie taciturnity led to the younger generation's rampant abbreviationitis.)"

Tacking -itis onto any random word to denote some pathology always drives us crazy, but it seems particularly inappropriate in the case of someone who makes words smaller, as this suffix is used clinically to describe cases of inflammation.