1000 Most Important Words PDF
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THE BALLANTINE REFERENCE LIBRARY lOOO MOST IM PO O TM WORDS NORMAN SCHUR INDISPENSABLE FOR WRITERS, SPEAKERS. TEACHERS! • Enrich your vocabulary • Express yourself clearly-and beautifully • Fun and easy to use! www.ballantinebooks.com U.S.A. $7.99 CANADA $10.49 REFERENCE ISBN 0-345-29863-2 5 0799 < LU 780345 298638 THE BALLANTINE REFERENCE LIBRARY lOOO MOST IMPORTANT WORDS NORMAN SCHUR • Enrich your vocabulary • Express yourself clearly—and beautifully • Fun and easy to use! -0 --.J ...... 00 av. . (c/o) "c::': ~ z > V1 °0v"-00.''. l0NI ~.r">z., ', ~ > 00 \JI1 :C.>'..:l ' aV 1 'N° ,., --.J 00 °' -0 lN -0 I §Cl']~,..> EAN N 1,000 Most Important Words Published by Ballantine Books: RANDOM HOUSE WEBSTER’S DICTIONARY RANDOM HOUSE ROGET’S THESAURUS RANDOM HOUSE GUIDE TO GOOD WRITING RANDOM HOUSE WEBSTER’S WORD MENU™ RANDOM HOUSE LATIN-AMERICAN SPANISH DICTIONARY RANDOM HOUSE SPANISH-ENGLISH ENGLISH-SPANISH DICTIONARY RANDOM HOUSE JAPANESE-ENGLISH ENGLISH- JAPANESE DICTIONARY RANDOM HOUSE GERMAN-ENGLISH ENGLISH- GERMAN DICTIONARY RANDOM HOUSE FRENCH-ENGLISH ENGLISH-FRENCH DICTIONARY Books published by The Random House Publishing Group are available at quantity discounts on bulk purchases for premium, educational, fund-raising, and special sales use. For details, please call 1-800-733-3000. 1,000 MOST IMPORTANT WORDS NORMAN SCHUR BALLANTINE BOOKS • NEW YORK A Ballantine Book Published by The Random House Publishing Group Copyright © 1982 by Eric Weber All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. www.ballantinebooks.com Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 82-8801 ISBN 0-345-29863-2 Manufactured in the United States of America First Edition: August 1982 OPM 39 38 37 36 35 34 33 32 To my poor wife, Marjorie, who has had to suffer the almost unbearable loss of my company during the writing of this book. No dictionary of a living tongue can ever be perfect.... In this work, when it shall be found that much is omitted, let it not be forgotten that much likewise is performed. —Samuel Johnson Is there a wretch whose crimes a sentence crave Of toil and torture, till he reach the grave? Let not the mill his wasted body wear, Let not the mine immerse him in despair. ‘Make dictionaries' be the doom assigned; All other punishments are there combined. —Lord Neaves (Translation of a poem in Latin by the French scholar Joseph Scaliger, 1540-1609) Acknowledgment l must express my heartfelt thanks to my old friend Ralph Berton, who went over the proofs with his usual (i.e., unusual) thoroughness, perspicacity—and wit. Preface The purpose of this book is to enrich your life by enriching your vocabulary. Anthropologists have long maintained that man’s uniqueness in the animal world is based on his gift of speech. Most of us haven’t taken proper advantage of it. We all have, in the words of Professor of Linguistics John Lyon of the University of Edinburgh, two kinds of vocabularies: the “active” and the “passive.” The active one consists of the words we use; the passive one includes the words we more or less recognize when we meet them but fail to use for one reason or another, be it uncertainty, timidity, or laziness. It is to be hoped that this book will activate the passive. Words have been included that I have found particularly expressive or especially rewarding, words that are adornments to speech or writing, words that mark you as one who makes good use of his special anthropological gift. The usual practice in dictionaries is to present a number, sometimes a large and confusing number, of meanings for each entry. In this volume, I have attempted to choose the one or few most significant and useful meanings in contemporary usage. From time to time you will run across the word figurative in the text. Many words are used figuratively as well as literally. The literal meaning of a word is its strict material meaning. The figurative use presents a symbolic picture. Boomerang is a good example. We know what it means literally: a bent wooden club that, when thrown, returns to the thrower. In its figurative sense, it means something that comes back to hurt you, not physically, but symbolically: something you may have said a long time ago, for example, that can now be used against you, perhaps long after you’ve reversed your opinion. Or take the word pedestrian. We all know what a pedestrian is. The word comes from the Latin word pedester, meaning “on foot.” But pedestrian has a figurative sense as well: “dull, com monplace, uninspired and uninspiring,” or “run-of-the-mill,” as in, He gave a pedestrian account of what must have been a hair-raising experience. Here we see the figurative use of the word, related to the literal only in the image of a person plod-
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