Improve Your Wordpower: The Key to a Bigger Vocabulary (Bloomsbury Reference)

by KathyRooney (Editor), Kathy Rooney (Editor)

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  Do you ever find yourself using a word without fully understanding its meaning? What kind of liar is egregious? Do you have a perspicacious mind? Words are the most freely available resource available to us and essential to social and business success. Yet often we find ourselves struggling to use them appropriately. Improve Your Wordpower is a step-by-step course for improving your language skills. Beginning with a test of your present vocabulary, it goes on to present a series of forty self-study sessions in twelve chapters. Each chapter introduces a set of ten infrequently used words - e.g. 'Words for Actions' includes 'disparaging', 'titillate', 'militate' and 'condone', while 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly' presents ten adjectives ending in '-ous' to describe people and the way they behave ('obsequious', 'impecunious', 'dolorous', etc). Each word is linked to an easy-to-remember example in which it can be used. Further sessions lead you on to etymologies and word-building, and give links to 'families' of associated words. For instance, in 'How to Flatter Your Friends', 'magnanimous' (quickly forgiving) is linked via 'animus' (its Latin root) to 'animation', 'pusillanimous' (small-minded), 'unanimous' (in agreement), and 'animosity' (hostility). At the end of each session, a test enables you to check your progress. Packed with lively examples and anecdotes of words in action, learning advice, and 'Teaser Questions', Improve Your Wordpower is a stimulating and informative means of boosting your language skills