The Thinker's Thesaurus: Sophisticated Alternatives to Common Words (Expanded Third Edition)

by Peter E. Meltzer

Overview

With over twenty percent more material, a must for any lover of distinctive words.

This entertaining and informative reference features sophisticated and surprising alternatives to common words together with no-fail guides to usage. Avoiding traditional thesauruses’ mundane synonym choices, Peter E. Meltzer puts each word—whether it’s protrepic, apostrophize, iracund, or emulous—in context by using examples from a broad range of contemporary books, periodicals, and newspapers. His new introduction makes the case for why we should widen our vocabulary and use the one right word. This groundbreaking thesaurus remains a unique venture, one that enriches your writing while helping you find the perfect word.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393338973
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	04/16/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	720
Sales rank:	415,905
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Peter E. Meltzer, the author of the best-selling The Thinker’s Thesaurus and So You Think You Know Baseball?, is an attorney and a former professor at Rutgers University School of Law.

Editorial Reviews

"One of the most distinctive features of the book is its use of proper names as synonyms."

Chicago Tribune

Meltzer, a lawyer and adjunct professor of law, here attempts to serve writers and journalists by correcting what he perceives to be a failure of existing thesauri. Such tools, Meltzer avers, usually offer a string of synonyms as common as the entry word itself, thus rarely providing the perfect synonym and leaving our vocabulary unenhanced. As a corrective, he aims to provide uncommon synonyms often omitted from traditional thesauri. The entries are for common words often placed in a specific context (set in parentheses) and give the part of speech, the unusual synonym in bold type, and a quotation, showing the synonym used in publication. This volume may work as a vocabulary enhancement tool, but as a general English-language thesaurus it is of limited value only, as relatively few entry words are covered and many of those only in a specific context. The spirited arguments offered in the author's preliminary essay "In Defense of the Hard Word" notwithstanding, giving only unfamiliar synonyms limits the book's usefulness and makes it a poor choice to replace existing general thesauri. Bottom Line A better selection-and one serving the same function-is the recent Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus, a much larger and richer, if slightly more expensive, reference book that provides all the coverage of a traditional thesaurus and adds a number of useful enhancements to aid the working writer.-Paul D'Alessandro, Portland P.L., ME Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal