All About Words: An Adult Approach to Vocabulary Building

420 Pages·1968·62.5 MB·English

by  Maxwell Nurnberg, Morris Rosenblum

A MENTOR BOOK
Hljj> 451-ME1879«$2.25

i

I

SfALL
ABOUT-

S?AN ADULT
APPROACH TO
VOCABULARY

BUILDINGS

From Anglo-Saxon origins to

Space Age lingo—an easy,

enjoyable way to gain real

vocabulary power, a must for

those who take word exams.

by Maxwell Nurnl^rg

and Morris Rosc-ablum

DID YOU KNOW

THAT SAMUEL A. MAVERICK, a 19th-
century
cattle rancher who refused
to

brand his calves, gave birth to an Eng-

lish word meaning
nonconformist,
or

one who does not follow the herd
.
.
•

that the man who discovered hypnotism,
Friedrich A. Mesmer,
is responsible for

the rather sinister word mesmerize
.
.
.

that mishmash
is an Old English word

dating back to the early 15th century?

Authors Nurnberg and Rosenblum go after
a word the way James Bond went after Dr.
No. Once they have a word nailed down

—

its origin, development, use, misuse—it
is

nailed
forever. They
include
everything,

from the
first English words derived from

Anglo-Saxon (the word word, for instance)

to flash words like astronaut which come

into being overnight.

Here's a brilliant new way to learn and
remember words—and have fun, too

—

as you power your
speech
with more

punch, pertinence, and perspicuity.

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ALL ABOUT

WORDS:

An Adult Approach

To Vocabulary Building

by Maxwell Nurnberg

and Morris Rosenblum

®

A MENTOR BOOK
IMEW AMEHICAIM LIBRARY

TUYIIB MlftftOfY

NEW YORK AND tCARBOROUOH. ONTARIO

© 1966 by Maxwell Nurnberg and Morris Rosenblum

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book,
or any portions thereof, in any form except for the inclusion of

brief quotations in a review. For information address
Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey 07632.

For "Loveliest of Trees" by A. E. Housman. From
"A Shropshire Lad"—Authorized Edition—from
THE COLLECTED POEMS OF A. E. HOUSMAN.
Copyright 1939, 1940, © 1959 by Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, Inc. Reprinted by permission of
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.

This is an authorized reprint of a hardcover
edition published by Prentice-Hall, Inc.

MBNTOR TKAI>KMARK RKU.
U.S. PAT. OFF. AND FORFION COUNTRIES
UKOfSTKKKH TIIADKMA1CK
MAIt(\A RKUISTRADA

IIKCHO KN CHICAGO, U.S.A.

Signet, Signet Classics, Mentor, Plume, Meridian and NAL
Books are published in the United States by
The New American Library, Inc.,
1633 Broadway, New York, New York 10019,

in Canada by The New American Library of Canada Limited,
81 Mack Avenue, Scarborough, Ontario MIL 1M8

First Mentor Printing, February, 1968

11
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PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Maxwell Numberg
is Adjunct
Associate
Professor
of

English
at New York University and Chairman of the

English Department
at Abraham Lincoln High School

in Brooklyn. He
is the author, among other books, of

What's the Good Word, and co-author with Dr. Rosen-
blum of How to Build a Better Vocabulary.

Dr.
Morris Rosenblum
is
Lecturer
in
Classical
Lan-

guages and Comparative Literature
at the City College

of City University, New York. He
is the author of an

award-winning book—a
translation
and
study
of
the

Latin poet Luxorius—as well
as other works on litera-

ture, the classics, and language.

To Rose and Dora

Acknowledgments

For
the many
excerpts
from
the
daily
press, we
are

especially indebted to the writers—many of them anonymous
—of The New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune,
from whose pages we have gathered most of our citations. We
have also used material from the New York World-Telegram
and Sun, and the New York Post,
as well
as short excerpts

from Saturday Review, Life, Time, Newsweek, and the Nation.

Since we have used so much current material—sometimes

of
a
controversial nature—we wish
to make
the
usual
dis-

claimer:
The
opinions
expressed
in
these
excerpts
do
not

necessarily represent
either our views or those
of our pub-

lisher.

For material other than newspaper excerpts we should like

to make the following acknowledgments:

To Saturday Review for permission to reprint excerpts from

John
G.
Fuller's
"Trade Winds,"
Martin
Levin's
"Phoenix

Nest," and "Your Literary L Q.," where some of the material

for exercises called "Triple Threat"
first appeared under our

names.

To "Pleasures in Learning," publication of New York Uni-

versity's Division of General Education, in which some of the

material in Chapter
1
first appeared, and which, in
its March

1966 issue, printed an abridged version of Chapter 8.

And to the following publishers for permission to reprint:

Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, Inc. and The Society of Authors

as the literary representatives of the Estate of the
late A. E.

Housman,
and
Messrs.
Jonathan
Cape
Ltd.,
publishers
of

A.
E. Housman's Collected Poems for "Loveliest of Trees."

Alfred A. Knopf for the sestet from Elinor Wylie's sonnet

"Pretty Words."

Cassell and Company, Ltd. and Doubleday Anchor Books

for excerpt from Robert Graves' Goodbye to All That.

Harvard University Press for excerpts from Plutarch's "Life

of Aristides," "Life of Solon," and "Life of Lucullus" in the

vii

viii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Loeb Classical Library edition of Plutarch's Lives,
translated

by Bernadotte Perrin.

Harcourt, Brace and World for the excerpt from David Gar-

nett's The Golden Echo.

Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith for paragraph about

Confucius.

The Macmillan Company for excerpt from Sean O'Casey's

/ Knock at the Door (1939).

Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and the author, Michael

Harrison, for excerpt from "The Mystery of the Fulton Docu-
ments."

Doubleday
for
excerpt from
"Poet
in
a
Valley
of Dry

Bones"
in Robert Graves' Mammon and the Black Goddess

(1965).

The New York Herald Tribune and Judith Crist for excerpt

from a film review.

To check derivations and definitions, we have used the Ox-

ford
English
Dictionary,
Webster's New
International
Dic-

tionary
Second
Edition
Unabridged,
as
well
as
Webster's

Third New
International
Dictionary Unabridged
(hereafter

referred
to
as Webster's Second and Webster's Third), and

Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language.

Those who wish
to
continue
the
study
of words—words

rather than vocabulary—will find the works of the following
authors enjoyable and helpful:
Ivor Brown, Mario Pei, Eric

Partridge, and Ernest Weekley.

Contents

A Word to Our Readers
xi

1. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way Through

the Dictionary
15

2. One Day with a Newspaper
28

3. A Week with a Book
42

4.
Getting at the Roots
52

5.
Syllables That Start the Word Going
69

6. Take a Number
89

7. End Pieces That Shape the Word
110

8. Words All About and Around Us
128

9.
English: A Distillation of Many Languages
151

10. A Miscellany of Words
184

11. From Native and Kindred Roots
210

12. Much Latin, Less Greek
225

13. The Old Myths Are
Still Alive
250

14.
Persons, Places, and Books
270

15.
Discovering the Old, Inventing the New
297

Our Own Battery of Tests
320

Answers
369

Index
387

Index of Writers Quoted
415

A Word to Our Readers

Why
still another book on vocabulary?

Frankly, because we thought we could write
a better one.

Even better than our own How
to Build a Better Vocabulary

(Prentice-Hall,
1949)? Yes,
for
in
the
intervening years we

have learned a great deal more about words and we're ready

to share this information with you.

If you read this book we do not guarantee:

1.
that you will become the leader of your community be-

cause of a newly acquired fluency or ease in conversation or

2.
that because of an increased vocabulary you will be able

to sell your ideas to the boss and be made vice president by a

grateful company and
its equally grateful stockholders or

3.
that you will marry the attractive, charming, and utterly

worshipful heir or heiress to millions.

Arrant
nonsense!
(You'll
find
the word
arrant
in Chap-

ter 7.)

But we do guarantee—if you read this book:

1.
that you will develop a keener interest in words,

2.
that you
will obtain
a greater insight into words—into

their wonder and magic,

3.
that you
will acquire many, many new words and hold

on to them longer, and

4.
that,
if you are preparing for an examination in which a

question on vocabulary figures large, you will find this book a
valuable aid.

We hope,
too,
that you
will have a good time reading the

text and
doing
the
exercises. We
have
interjected what
the

English
call
"asides"—stray
bits
of
related
information,
re-

vealing
sidelights,
obiter
dicta.
(You'll
find
obiter
dicta
ex-

plained in Chapter
12, "Much Latin, Less Greek.")

Nor have we hesitated to include poetry, anecdotes,
fillers,

and word games—always provided they had something
to do

Xll
A WORD TO OUR READERS

with the subject at hand. For we have tried to make the study
of words pleasant and easy and
as readable
as a
story. The

book has been
designed
for your enjoyment
as
well
as
in-

struction.

Have fun!

ALL ABOUT

WORDS