Customer Reviews

New York Times Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, & Mispronounced Words

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I have to say - when I found this book lying around at my parents' place, I never thought I'd pick it up and start reading it. I mean, it's a dictionary for goodness sake! But when I got stuck looking up a word that didn't appear in my regular dictionary, I picked up this little oddity. And trust me, oddity is the right word.

This book had some of the strangest words I'd ever seen, right alongside words I used every day. Luckily, for most of the words I already knew in there, I was using them correctly, but every once in a while I would find something that I'd used often, but used completely incorrectly! The title is definitely not a misnomer.

It's a scary thought, but once I started searching through this thing, I found that I could not put it down. It's a load of fun using it for Balderdash words, and it really is quite informative. If you're stuck on an essay and need a few synonyms, or you just want to make George Orwell turn over in his grave, this book is a must-have.

Honestly, it's a first-rate piece of work!

This book consists of 377 pages of definitions and pronunciations. There are roughly 30-40 words per page, or something on the order of 11,000-15,000 words.

By far the most common entries are words with a specific, well-defined meaning, but which are unlikely to be encountered in everyday life. They are words used in specialized fields, such as medicine, law, chemistry and biology. For example, "Ordovician" is defined as

"Relating to an early period of the Paleozoic era . . .
occurring 440 to 500 million years ago."

This little factoid is useless for almost everyone (the exceptions being scientists who study the Earth's biogeochemical evolution) and really has no place in a dictionary for popular use. Unfortunately, it is typical of the book as a whole.

As an aside, note that the given dates are wrong (the Ordovician is dated from 439 to 495 million years ago), and that the suggested pronunciation is substandard (it should be "veesh," not "vish").

The title and subtitle of the book (Misunderstood, Misused and Mispronounced Words; Words we know until somebody asks us what they mean) are misleading. They imply a dictionary of words you might have trouble with in ordinary conversation. The book contains no such list.

For example, what does "ironic" mean? A lot of people have trouble defining this word. Ironically, "irony" is not included in this book.

How about "misused" words? The word "beg," as in "to beg the question," is frequently misused as a synonym for "raise." Actually it is a synonym for "avoid." "Begging the question" is the logical error of assuming the very thing that you are trying to prove. Unfortunately, the book will not help you here; the word "beg" is not included.

How about "mispronounced" words? A famous example is George Bush's repeated mispronunciation of "nuclear" as "nook-yoo-ler." The book recommends a two-syllable pronunciation ("noo-clear") rather than the correct three-syllable pronunciation ("noo-clee-er").

In summary, what we have is a list of more than 10,000 words that you will never encounter, let alone have to define, pronounce, or use in a sentence. Moreover, words in general use which are often misunderstood, misused or mispronounced do not appear in the book, or if they do, are frequently misunderstood, misused or mispronounced. The content of the book is more accurately described as "Words we don't know: this is what they don't mean, and also how not to pronounce them."

Why the New York Times would place its imprimatur on such trash is a question only the Times can answer. The only good thing about the book is its title, which is provocative and promising. The marketing genius who came up with this has talent.

The content of the book is presumably free from copyright restrictions, either because the Times already owns it or because it has lapsed into the public domain. I favor the former explanation: the Times is churning out a few extra dollars from a worthless database they happen to own. But this is only a theory.

Probably the best use of this book is as a cat box liner. The title is misleading and the content worthless. I find it rather sleazy, on the Times' part, to promote this book.

this book is a godsend for those who need a little help *me* with their spelling... and works wonders for scrabble* words. worth the price.

Highly recommended to everyone who might be interested in history of words and use of words.

I have quite an extensive vocabulary, but I have never used or misused the words "isopectic" or "phagocytolysis", both of which appear misspelled as I write my review.
The title is misleading. This is not a book for people with poor grammar who say things like "irregardless" or "nip it in the butt"---rather, it is a dictionary of little known and little used words. So it is no wonder that when they are used, they are often misused! Indeed, there are very few words contained within this compilation which are used in mainstream conversation, even among the very literate.
I bought this book online without being able to crack it open, so I cannot even claim to being in error here. Worse, I bought it for my 8th grader who became appropriately iracund and immediately wanted to explanate it in front of the next passing truck! "Caveat emptor" on this one, dictionary lovers. I would give it zero stars were it not for the fact that it is, without meaning to be, entertaining and one can,if one has much extra time on his or her hands, use it to increase his or her range of little-used terminology. While this may sound rather ipsedixit,the microlux to be acquired here is minimal, just look at how much the used ones are going for on amazon! I discommend this ridiculous book, wholeheartedly!

I chanced upon the hardbound 1971 edition of this at a library sale. Wow! This is exactly what I was looking for when I bought the "Oxford Essential Dictionary of Difficult Words." I felt that Oxford had the right idea but their execution was disappointing (inclusion of too many Easy Words and omission of some oft-encountered Difficult ones.) This book from the Times seems to have been undertaken with exactly the right editorial philosophy.

Except - I must agree with at least one reviewer who complained that too many of the words are specialized technical, medical, legal and scientific terms which the average reader is unlikely to encounter. This is a weakness, and because of it (as well as a certain vagueness & incompleteness of many definitions) I must take away a star.

Still, this book has "succedaneum" and the Oxford book does not. Winner: the Times.

My first criticism of this book is that the definitions are often very incomplete, giving only the definition of a particular word that the author feels may be misunderstood. While that often might fulfill the prupose of the book, I think it would be better to consult a standard dictionary and determine which definition fiils the current need.
Also, this book does not (and of course, could not) contain every word an educated adult might want to look up. It is simply one lexicographer's list of words that someone might misunderstand or mispronounce.
For that matter, I can't understand why this book is any advantage over a good, full-sized dictionary. This is just a smaller dictionary of less often used words, but it contains no information on usage or pronounciation that would not be in any other regular dictionary. It simply contains fewer words and fewer definitions for those words. There are not any real mistakes in this book. But if you buy a standard size dictionary, this book is simply redundant and much less useful.

.. how many of our American friends will learn that 'aluminium' is pronounced as it is written (a-lew-min-ee-um) - rather than 'aluminum' (a-loo-min-um).

:)