More Words You Should Know

by Adams Media TBD

What's the difference between "affect" and "effect"?

How about "lay" and "lie"? "Stationery" and "stationary"?

Lots of people need a quick and authoritative way to identify and define the most troublesome common words. But reading dictionaries is no one's idea of fun! If only there were a list , not of every word, but of the right words, the ones that are used frequently but don't quite register when you come across them.

More Words You Should Know features straightforward, succinct definitions and sentence examples of 1500 tough-but-common words.

Genres: Reference

267 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[HeavyReader · Rating 3 out of 5]

[01-25-12] I'm going to read at least two pages a day until I finish the whole book and know 1,500 new words.

So, I did not learn 1,500 new words. I already knew many, many of the words in this book. However, I did learn some new ones like

zymurgy: the branch of chemistry concerned with fermentation

schadenfreude: an instance of rejoicing at the misfortune of another

bibelot: a beautiful trinket (Now I understand the Garrison Keillor joke about Evelyn Bibelot.)

panjandrum: an important person; a bigwig

noisome: ill-smelling and offensive; also, harmful (Up until now, I thought "noisome" meant "noisy.")

Each word is accompanied by a phonetic pronunciation, a definition, and a sentence using the word in context. Beware: the sentences are rife with errors in punctuation and spelling. Some words are missing, and some words are just plain wrong. I loose confidence in any book so poorly edited.

Something I really like about this book is that it includes each of the United States, along with its capital and its number of admission to the Union.

Despite the typos, this is a handy little book to keep on the reference shelf.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun with words.

[Varrsity]

Everyone can benefit from learning knew words.