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Title: The Highly Selective Dictionary For The Extraordinarily Literate by Eugene H. Ehrlich ISBN: 0-06-270190-8 Publisher: HarperResource Pub. Date: 02 July, 1997 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (10 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Fills Its Purpose Beautifully
Comment: I believe that there are two kinds of people in this world. The first type are people that use language merely as a means to communicate. The second type are people that use language as an artform.
If you are the first type of person; do not buy this book. It will have no use or meaning for you, and you certainly won't find it entertaining. Unless you just have a quirky need to read dictionaries, you won't dig this volume, AT ALL.
If you are the second type of person - the type that enjoys learning new words just for the sake of knowing them; the type that likes being able to say the same thing 15 different ways...then this book is for you.
I love to write. I love to read. I enjoy using words for fun and for creative expression. This book gave me words that I had never heard before and that is, indeed, becoming a rare treasure to find. I'm a huge word geek, and so this dictionary was a perfect fit for me.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and I actually read it from cover to cover like a novel (except that I went through with a highlighter as I read). Words can be used to fill a lot of different purposes, and they can be enjoyed in a much broader way than just coming to understand the definitions. Conveying information is only ONE of language's many functions.
Though the words in this book are not likely to find a place in your daily conversational vocabulary set, they will most assuredly become a part of your poems, your stories, and that file-cabinet of knowledge we all keep way back in the recesses of our brains. I highly recommend this book to all of my fellow wordsmiths and nerd/geek/dorks the world over.
Rating: 5
Summary: A very interesting book.
Comment: This book is quite interesting. It's a most interesting dictionary, filled with words that you couldn't find in most dictionaries. I don't agree with many of their selections that are for the 'highly literate' (if you don't know 'regretful and regimen' you might want to start with the regular dictionary) but many of the words are good (defenestartion, quidnunc, etc.). This is the best way to insult people that I have ever found. I'm not sure I would buy this for myself, but it makes a good gift. I sure enjoyed getting it as a gift, but I'm sure you would enjoy it just buying it for yourself. Enjoy!
Rating: 5
Summary: A Unique and Useful Compilation for College Students
Comment: Sometimes it is wise not to judge a book by its title. I suggest that you ignore the elitist title and concentrate on its contents. The Highly Selective Dictionary for the Extraordinary Literate is a useful compilation, a helpful tool for college students.
Eugene Ehrlich offers only those words that you are likely to reference in a dictionary. Simple words are not listed. For example, none of the words that I used in this review can be found in his selective dictionary. Likewise, those 500,000 words in the English language that are rarely used are not included in this book. Ehrlich's words inhabit a borderland separating those words we already know and those words that we will never need to know.
Did he get it right? Well, it depends on the geographic position of your particular borderland. I offer you some empirical data.
I am reading for the first time The Way of the World, an early eighteenth century play by William Congreve. I found only two troublesome words (billingsgate and nonpariel) in the editor's 12-page introduction. Ehrlich provided clear, concise definitions for both words.
Previously I reviewed a rather scholarly work, The Odes of John Keats, by Helen Vendler, a respected literature professor at Harvard. I scanned a random chapter (Ode to a Nightingale, 32 pages) and found synecdoche, antiphonal, discarnate, mimetic, solipsistic, and efficacious. Only the words antiphonal and discarnate were not in Ehrlich's dictionary.
I looked at random pages in Ehrlich's dictionary, tested myself, and concluded that for about one-fourth of the entries I would have trouble offering an acceptable definition, even with some help from contextual clues. I listed below three typical pages from Ehrlich's dictionary:
We find on page 67 the words existentialism, exoteric (do not confuse with esoteric), expatiate, expiate, explicate, and expostulate,
and on page 111 is mimesis (and mimetic), minatory, misanthrope, miscegenation, miscreant, misogamy, misogyny, misprision, and mitigate (sometimes confused with militate),
and lastly on page 164 there is sophistry, soporific, sororicide, soubrette, soupcon, specious, splenetic, spoonerism, and squash (as contrasted with quash).
I originally bought this dictionary to help my daughter prepare for the GRE. Having devoted some time to browsing this fascinating compilation, I now hope that she will not forget to return Ehrlich's dictionary to me.
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Title: The Highly Selective Thesaurus for the Extraordinarily Literate by Eugene H. Ehrlich ISBN: 0062700162 Publisher: HarperResource Pub. Date: 27 April, 1994 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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Title: The Highly Selective Dictionary of Golden Adjectives: For the Extraordinary Literate by Eugene Ehrlich ISBN: 0060186364 Publisher: HarperResource Pub. Date: 09 July, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Evolution of Useful Things: How Everyday Artifacts-From Forks and Pins to Paper Clips and Zippers-Came to be as They are by Henry Petroski ISBN: 0679740392 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 01 February, 1994 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Word Lover's Dictionary: Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words by Josefa Heifetz ISBN: 0806517204 Publisher: Citadel Trade Pub. Date: March, 1996 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: To Engineer Is Human : The Role of Failure in Successful Design by Henry Petroski ISBN: 0679734163 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 31 March, 1992 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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