Customer Reviews

100 Words To Make You Sound Smart

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Words are fun, entertaining, and educational! And that is what '100 Words To Make You Sound Smart' is all about folks. I have purposefully never reviewed a reference title, but this was simply to good to pass up. The editors of American Heritage Dictionaries really did a nice job here in selecting interesting, useful words that can and are used in our day-to-day vocabulary.

Each specific word was easily defined and placed into a useful context for readers to understand. Quoting from an assortment of sources including movies, television, magazines, and newspapers, it was fun to explore new words and to reacquaint myself with some old friends.

I have a suggestion for anyone interested: next time you're taking a road trip with someone you like, take this little diddy with you . . . and have some fun!

I recently got this book at my elementary school's book fair, and I was sucked into it immediately. I love to learn big words and impress my peers. I also adore writing, and now that I have this book, I can use the vocabulary in my stories. My dream is to be in the Scripp's National Spelling Bee, and these are the type of words given to contestants. I reccomend this book to anyone who had a love for reading and most of all, spelling to impress!

True, these 100 words in the book may make me sound smart, but I wonder if I use them in writing to the eighth-grade-reading-level public, will I make them feel stupid?

A book I read recently said that we are to write to that reading level, not because our reader's ability, but because today people are sssssoooooo busy and stressed they don't want to take the time to read "harder," higher-level words.

I was thrilled that a writer/editor of other people's words, I knew every single one. So now let's see how many of those 100 words I can use in a sentence (do I need a hobby, or what?)

The lurid (explicit/vivid) paradox (contradict) is insidious (treacherous), making me peevish (irritable) in that it is Spartan (simple manner) and without stigma (disgrace), but is also stoic (show no emotion), ostentatious (pretentious), and fastidious (attention to detail)--a dichotomy (divided into two parts) that is a red herring (draws attention from matter at hand) that is 100 percent non sequitur (does not follow logically).

So there. Writers and readers, if you can catch an idiosyncratic word (peculiar to a specific group), write me at P.O. Box _____.

Armchair Interviews says: The 100 Words That Make You Sound Smart would be a fun gift for anyone, including you--because anything that can make you sound smart can't be all bad. You think?

This book is an absolute embarrassment. Anybody reading beyond the high school level will find it totally valueless. These would be great vocabulary words for children in grade school.

I bought this book expecting interesting words like pellucid or philology (thanks Simon Winchester), brobdingnagian or perspicacity. Instead, I was chagrined to find a banal collection of everyday language, including:

capricious, carte blanche, heresy, malaise, mantra, nirvana, red herring, suave, tirade...

AHD editors, I expected better!

I'm a pretty average high school student. The reason why I bought this book was because the SAT's were coming up and I needed to improve my vocabulary. OK so there are some easy words like suave, vile, and antidote, but there were a lot of words that I wasn't familiar with like svengali or gregarious.

However, if you are an adult and already know what svengali means, you probably don't need this book. The editors did write in the foreword that the word choices were based on expressiveness not obscurity which is why they didn't include words like "brobdingnagian" or "philolgy".

Something that bothered a lot me was the title of the book; it made me feel pretentious reading this book.

Overall, I liked the format of the book. It was short, easy to read, easy to carry, and was somewhat entertaining. I also liked how the authors included famous quotes and passages as well as word origins. For me, the book provided the definitions of words that I've skimmed over but never bothered to look up.

This is cute book that is fun to flip through and keep with your dictionary. It is essentially just a small dictionary and beyond definitions doesn't go into detail on entomology.

I picked up "100 Words" at the Urban Outfitters, and I only needed 10 minutes to realize that the book is not meant to vastly increase an above-average vocabulary. This book is only useful to those possessing a sub par vocabulary. The words presented are easily defined, and most are not worth using in a sentence.

Like many people I have trouble remembering powerful words to use in the written and verbal sense.
I usually remember the appropriate word long after the conversation or discussion has finished.
Most vocabulary books are rather cumbersome and provide too much content and detail to realistically remember.
This why "100 words to make you sound smart" was great for me. After casually reading the book a few times I was able to memorize at least 40 words that I could use on a regular basis.
Even if you only remember half of the book's content, you have automatically improved your vocabulary by 50 words.

Great reference to use larger words. I dont' really care for the title of the book though.

I bought this because I wanted to expand my vocabulary, so you could imagine my disappointment when I got this book and already knew most of the words in it. Save your money.