The Highly Selective Dictionary For The Extraordinarily Literate

If you are a lover of the English language, this is a great gift for the writer you know.

I already knew most of the words, which weren't that interesting or useful anyway. It isn't a bad book but not my favorite of the genre.

This is not a thesaurus for run of the mill word replacement, but it is exceptional at providing snappy starts or intriguing ending for articles. The key to attracting a reader is capturing him with the opening sentence or paragraph, and the right word can help with this. This book provides those eye catching entries, as well as providing words or phrases that wrap up thoughts and elements in your article body. Well worth the price, I believe it got me a couple of freelance opportunities by spicing up my query letter.

This dictionary definitely has some interesting words and the appropriate definitions, but it is not very comprehensive. I purchased the book last week and several words I tried to look up were not listed: ecumenical, for starters. Please excuse my spelling of ecumenical, because I don't have a real dictionary with me at the moment.
Purchase this book only if you intend to keep it right next to a real dictionary, and in that case you might not need it.

the title led me to believe i would be getting a humorous work. after all, the title had to be tongue-in-cheek, right?

what i got is an idiosyncratic selection of words the author assumes only 'highly' literate people would know, with a few medical and other professional terms thrown in.

it is depressing to think that some, or even most,of these words are assumed not to be known by literate people. heaven knows, standards are slipping, but i've read and spoken most of these words for decades.

perhaps the better companion book to this one would be steve allens _dumpth, the dumbing of america_. because if this book represents extraordinary literacy, we're in serious trouble.