Customer Reviews

The Highly Selective Dictionary of Golden Adjectives: For the Extraordinarily Literate

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All philologists - people who love literature and the english language - will find this to be a very interesting and useful book. It helps you learn new words and provides their etymology, pronunciation and several sentences. Unlike many other vocabulary books where your not quite sure how to use the words you learn; this book makes it a lot easier. I also recommend:
"There's a word for it!" by Charles Harrington Elster
Norman Schur's books "2000 Most Challenging and Obscure Words" and "1000 Most important words."
For those you are just beginning to expand their vocabulary the "Word Smart" series is very handy and so it "A Pocket Guide to Vocabulary" 3rd edition by Barron's

I love this series. I have a client, Explainers, who takes the selection of their words very seriously while trying to reduce aliteracy in the workplace.

I recently bought this book for them and they absolutely loved it - just as I have. That's the third time I've purchased a book from this series for folks I know who appreciate and study the English language as I do.

The words in place in the book are not particularily rare to witness at all; I find them to be quite helpful on a regular basis, myself. The synonymousness of many of the entries within makes me sometimes feel like more space should have been left for a few more curious selections I would have a better time using. If I'd only had this some time ago.

It's difficult to imagine a use for this book. Most of the words listed are so uncommon and unrecognizable that every writer should be warned to stay away from it as if it could bring leprosy to their writing. Why? Because if you use a word that people don't understand, you lose your reader. And as a writer, that's the very last thing you want to do.

As long as you don't try to use most of these words, it's a terrific little book that you can peruse through and perhaps find words for uses other than what this book may have intended. One example is the word lachrymose. Lemony Snicket used this word as the name of a lake in his book. Much sadness surrounded Lake Lachrymose, and since the definition of lachrymose is "mournful; given to shedding tears", it is appropriately named.

"Golden adjectives" is a real stretch. In fact, some of these adjectives are so specialized or uninteresting that no English speaker would miss them if they were dropped from every existing dictionary. If you think "abortifacient" is a golden adjective, buy the book. Otherwise, you'd be better served by other resources.