1000 Most Important Words
by Norman W. Schur

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Book Reviews of 1000 Most Important Words

Book Review: Perfect for a Polymaths Prolix Persiflage
Summary: 4 Stars

Few adults will be stumped when they encounter a word such "dogmatic," "churlish," "lascivious," "venerate," "rectitude," "gregarious," "cabal," "pastiche," `indigenous," "sacrosanct," "desultory", or "equivocal" (all selections incorporated in this volume), but not many of us employee these in our everyday conversations either. Have you ever heard of anyone attending a PTA meeting saying "I am off to the consortium" or during campaign season have you ever denounced "the chicanery of a candidate's commercials"?

Most of these are merely dormant members of our vocabularies. Perusing the out-of the ordinary, but less than extraordinary words that compose the bulk of this work may elicit a few of them from the desuetude of the mind`s dormer.

Those who seek the urbaneness of truly offbeat words will find occasional examples, but as the title intimates, that is not the thrust of this work. Still "deracinate," "ennui," "otiose," "sang-froid," "manqué," and "hegira" are among the features of this congeries that would send quite a few erudite folk to the nearest dictionary. Using them in conversation is guaranteed to leave the ruck bumfuzzled.

Of these isolated abnormalities, hermaphrodite stands out as truly enigmatic. The only definition Schur provides is "a living organism with both male and female organs of sex." Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary expands the definition with "a person or thing in which two opposite qualities are combined' and "combining two opposite qualities." Both of these meanings seem likely to find more use than Schur's limited delineation which could only apply in very few instances beyond a description of Janet Reno. Oversights like this confirm that all vocabulary building sources (...) should be verified in a reputed dictionary before the words are summoned perfidiously.

Summary of 1000 Most Important Words

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• Subjects > Health, Fitness & Dieting
• Education & Reference > Dictionaries & Thesauruses
• Foreign Languages
• Words & Language