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Title: The Describer's Dictionary: A Treasury of Terms and Literary Quotations by David Grambs ISBN: 0-393-31265-8 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: August, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.22 (9 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: Technical: Utterly Lacking in Creative Invention
Comment: How about this for the sole entry under "having turned in feet: pigeon-toed"? The entire volume is filled with inanities of this type. One would have to be pretty low on the vocabulary food chain to be incapable of readily summoning to mind almost any of the synonyms listed in this book. Also, the quotations sacrifice the sublime for the politically correct, and are therefore equally lacking in excellence. Don't buy it unless you are in the lower 20% of the populace in verbal facility, for you will be wasting your money.
Rating: 3
Summary: Purely physical
Comment: Lots of fun and useful for physical descriptions of animal, vegetable and mineral. Not appropriate for writers looking for inspiration in abstracts, emotions or thought.
Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent reference, though slightly outlandish content
Comment: This is a synonym-finder on steroids, a great idea. The main advantage is an expanded word-useage demonstration (compared to a regular thesaurus), which gives a much better feel for context and slight semantical differences between otherwise synonymous terms. I've found this book very helpful, and I've quickly grown used to consulting it nearly every time I write anything; it sits on my table, dog-eared and with a multitude of post-it notes sticking out of it.
A couple of wishes for the future, though: first, some of the suggested options there are too far out, using them will mean forcing a dictionary in the hand of your prospective reader. Not necessarily a flaw though, just be selective, aware of context and target audience of your writing.
Now, a real flaw: no index. Truly, a book of this kind must have an index, after all, sometimes you even know the word you're after but need an extra usage check, finding it w/o an index is a task more onerous than I'd like; sticky notes can be used as a palliative, but why make it necessary in the first place?
Another obvious wish is for the author to produce a computerized version -- nothing fancy, just like any searchable dictionary on CD, or, perhaps simply this very same book in the electronic form with hyperlinks will do.
All in all, a tasty and worthwhile little book; recommended.
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Title: Random House Webster's Word Menu by Stephen Glazier ISBN: 0375700838 Publisher: Random House Reference & Pub. Date: 21 July, 1998 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: The Synonym Finder by J. I. Rodale, Nancy LaRoche, Laurence Urdang ISBN: 0446370290 Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: 1986 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Flip Dictionary by Barbara Ann Kipfer ISBN: 1582971404 Publisher: Writers Digest Books Pub. Date: January, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.99 |
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Title: Descriptionary (Facts on File Writer's Library) by Marc McCutcheon ISBN: 0816041067 Publisher: Checkmark Books Pub. Date: August, 2000 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Choose the Right Word : Second Edition by S. I. Hayakawa ISBN: 0062731319 Publisher: HarperResource Pub. Date: 31 May, 1994 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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