The Superior Person's Book of Words

Words are not only tools; they are also weapons. The first object of this book is to provide the ordinary man in the street with new and better verbal weapons -- words which until now have been available only to philologists, lexicographers, and art critics. Hitherto, the man who has known the precise meaning of egregious, pejorative, exigent, pusillanimous and usufruct has been able to enjoy a position of unfair advantage over the rest of us. We yield to him in debate, not because his arguments are more cogent, but because they are less intelligible. We accept him as a Superior Person because his vocabulary is a badge of rank as compelling as a top hat or a painted forehead. Five hundred such words are now brought together in this book. Learn them; use them; and by their use you may become a Superior Person. Of course, there have been other books devoted to the listing and explaining of hard words. But this book goes beyond that. It offers, for the first time, practical guidance on how best to use these words in real-life situations. - Prolegomena.