referencebooks

The Language of World War II: Abbreviations, Captions, Quotations, Slogans, Titles and Other Terms and Phrases

Compiled by A. Marjorie Taylor
Head, Literature Division
Rochester (N.Y.) Public Library

Published by H.W. Wilson Company, 1944

This is a 5.5" by 8.5" paperback running to 94 pages including two pages of references, an index, and a list of song titles, plus a one-page foreword by the author.

I love finding these odd gems in our reference collection, items that generations of librarians here have held onto either by neglect or by recognition of their unique contributions from a reference point of view. This is one that's more than entertaining, but has a definite use to students of WWII history.

I am copying the entire preface here, because it describes how the process of putting the book together was something that arose out of the day to day work of being a reference librarian:

This collection really began with "Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition." When conflicting stories were circulating as to who actually used the phrase at Pearl Harbor, I felt, from the background of my library experience, that the stories should be noted for future reference. So a folder was made for the vertical file under the heading, World War II--Slogans, and soon many other stories joined the "Praise the Lord." As the file grew, other members of the Rochester Public Library staff became interested and having once become slogan-conscious, we found apt phrases, headlines and poster captions in increasing numbers, as we read magazine articles, glanced through the daily newspapers, read books and listened to the radio.

Our material soon seemed to approach book proportion. It was difficult to know just what to include but the final decision was : quotations, slogans, poster captions and song titles (since so many of both of those resembled slogans), initialed government agencies created in connection with the war effort, and initialed women's organizations which were either started in this war or developed during the course of it.

Poster captions came not only from observation but also from the collection of posters in the Rochester Public Library. For song titles we consulted the large collection of songs of this war in the Sibley Music Library of the University of Rochester, which they generously placed at our disposal. For government war agencies we used the United States Government Manual published by the Division of Public Inquiries of the Office of War Information.

Many activities which seemed very directly connected with the war effort, such as Blood Bank, Rationing, Victory Gardens etc. were included in an attempt to make this a useful handbook on subjects connected with World War II.

Throughout the book we have listed the sources of information in the hope that librarians everywhere may be saved hours of research.

We realize that since the material relates to the present war, of necessity it cannot be complete at this time, but there seems to be enough included to answer a real need. And we hope that readers and users of the book will send us new entries as they find them so that a revised edition if any, may be as complete as possible.

To the staff members of the Rochester Public Library and to others who have aided in collecting items, our sincere thanks.

September 7, 1944
A. M. Taylor

Here's a list of all the entries on facing pages 34 and 35:

• "Hell, We Haven't Started to Fight. Our Artillery Hasn't Been Overrun Yet."
  
• "Hello, You Limey"
  
• Help Him . . . Help Yourself . . . For Victory at Least 10% of Your Pay Every Payday
  
• H for V
  
• H-Hour
  
• Hit Hard and Often with the Marines
  
• "Hit Hard, Hit Fast, Hit Often"
  
• He's a 'Fighting Fool'--Give Him the Best You've Got!
  
• "Hit the Enemy Twice: First to Find Out What He's Got; Then, to Take It Away from Him"
  
• Hit the Silk
  
• "Hitler Can't Lick These People"
  
• "Hitler Has Missed the Bus"
  
• "Hitler Has No Theme, Naught but Mania, Appetite and Exploitation"
  
• Hitlerite
  
• H.M.S. Pepperpot; H.M.S. Porcupine
  
• "Hold the Line"
  
• "Homma May Have the Bottle--But I've Got the Cork"
  
• Honest Bob
  

Here are a couple of excerpts:

"Tomorrows that Sing": Last words of a French hostage about to be shot by the Nazis. Before he was shot (July, 1942) in the Cherche Midi prison in Paris, Communist Deputy Gabriel Peri wrote : "I should like my friends to know that I have been faithful to my life-long ideal. I should like my fellow-countrymen to know that I am dying that France may live. . . In a few minutes I am going out to prepare the tomorrows that sing. (Je vais préparer tout à l'heure les lendemains qui chantent.)" --New York Times Magazine. April 11, 1943. p. 15

"We Are the Ultimate Hope and Sanctuary of Human Liberty": By Herbert Hoover. Address to Pennsylvania Society of New York, December 21, 1940. --Vital Speeches. January 1, 1941 p.183

"We Do Not Covet Anything from Any Nation Except Their Respect": By Winston Churchill. To the French people, an address broadcast in French and in English, October 21, 1940.--Vital Speeches. November 1, 1940. p. 48; Churchill. Blood, Sweat and Tears. p.403

The Origin of Medical Terms, Second Edition

By Henry Alan Skinner

Published by Hafner, 1970

This is a 7" by 10" clothbound book running to 438 pages, printed two columns per page, plus an introduction. Entries for medical scientists are illustrated with small pen and ink drawings or etchings.

Etymological dictionaries are fascinating, and more fascinating if they focus on a subject of interest to you. Most etymological dictionaries provide longer discussions of fewer words than a regular dictionary, which makes it logical to create one focused on a specific vocabulary, like the vocabulary of medicine. This dictionary has about 4,000 words in it, a tenth of what you typically find in a smaller English dictionary. Typical entries are about two column inches in length but are sometimes a half a page long.

The drawback of this book is its age. At 36 years old, it's a bit dated, in more than one way. First, the vocabulary of medicine has greatly expanded and has also rendered some terms obsolete. Second, some ideas in historical linguistics have changed, which means that we now know that some of the etymological tracings in this book are probably wrong. (I can't tell you which ones, but I can tell you that the introduction states that Basque is a Semitic language, an idea that historical linguistics has thoroughly discarded by now.) If you use this book taking account of its age, however, it can be very useful and entertaining.

Here is a list of the first fifteen entries in the "L" sequence:

• LABIUM
  
• LABORATORY
  
• LABOUR
  
• LABRUM
  
• LABYRINTH
  
• LAC
  
• LACERTUS FIBROSUS
  
• LACRIMAL
  
• LACUNA
  
• LAENNEC
  
• LAEVULOSE
  
• LALLOUETTE
  
• LAMARCK
  
• LAMBDA
  
• LAMINA
  

The etymological discussions provided are kind of fun. Here's just one typical example:

RADIUM
    Latin--a ray.
    The discovery of a metallic element which emitted rays was announced in December 1898 in a paper communicated to the Académie des Sciences de Paris and signed by Pierre Curie, S. Curie, and G. Bemont, "Sur une nouvelle substance fortement radioactive, dans la pech blende." The substance was radium chloride. The action of radium on malignant tumours was first shown by Danysz in 1903.

A Dictionary of Landscape: A Dictionary of Terms Used in the Description of the World's Land Surfaces

By George A. Goulty

Published by Avebury Technical, 1991.

This is a 6" by 9" clothbound book running to 309 pages plus a two page preface. It is printed using a monospaced typewriter font, in the way short-run specialty academic books were often published before the personal computing revolution.

The preface says, "The purpose of this dictionary [...] is to give definitions of terms that are important to all those concerned or interested with (sic) the land surface of this planet. It is a dictionary of technical terms written partly for specialists, but more particularly for the technically minded person and for students." The book includes definitions of terms relating to landscape that come from aboriculture, agriculture, architecture, biology, building construction, forestry, geology, geography, horticulture, urban planning, and many other fields.

For a sense of what is included, here is a list of the first fifteen entries in the "W" sequence:

• WADI
  
• WAKE-DUNE
  
• WALDHUFENDORF
  
• WALDSTERBEN
  
• WALLACE'S LINE
  
• WALTHAM CHASE MEADOW, HAMPSHIRE, ENGLAND
  
• WANING SLOPES
  
• WAPENTAKE
  
• WARD
  
• WARPING
  
• WARPLAND, WARPLANDS
  
• WARREN
  
• WASH
  
• WASHLAND
  
• WASTE, WASTELAND
  

Definitions are given usually in a few lines of easy-to-understand and sometimes entertaining text. There is attention to words that come from an American context, but the book is basically British.

Here are a few sample definitions:

INTROVERT GARDEN     A garden design that ignores or screens everything beyond the boundary of the garden, and concentrates on creating features of visual interest within the site. Opposite to extravert garden.

HERMITAGE     The habitation of a hermit; a solitary dwelling place for meditation. It became fashionable in Britain in the 18th century to build hermitages as a garden feature of interest; but it was difficult to find sufficient hermits to occupy them. Some of the best known hermitages were at Stowe, Buckinghamshire; Painshill, Surrey; and Stourhead in Wiltshire, England.

DUMPLING     The soil remaining in the centre of an open excavation which is commenced by the sinking of a trench around the site. The dumpling is removed later.

LIDO     A beach of sand or silt in front of a shore lagoon. The best known example is the lido which protects the lagoon at Venice. This has been converted into a famous bathing beach, so that the word lido has now come to mean a bathing beach; even at fresh water and artificial lake resorts.

This is a handy book if you're studying geography or landscape architecture and can compensate for the British perspective.

Technical Manual and Dictionary of Classical Ballet, Third Revised Edition

By Gail Grant

Published by Dover, 1982

This is a small paperback: 5.5" by 8.5" and 139 pages plus a pronunciation guide and a brief bibliography.

There are lots of ballet dictionaries. Some are newer and perhaps some are more thorough in their explanations, but this is one that has retained its popularity over the years.

The back cover describes what's in the book:

Moving from "abstract ballet" to "adage, adagio" to "working leg" and "wrapped position," the book fully describes and defines over 1,100 ballet steps (saut de chat, jeté enveloppé, failli, entrechat six, etc.), movements and poses (arabesque, épaulement, attitude, en arrière, retiré, à terre, dégagé, etc.), and other expressions and concepts. For each, first a phonetic transcription is provided, then a literal translation, and finally an explanation of how the step is performed, the pose captured, or the movement executed, of how the concept fits with actual ballet dancing, or of the purpose or function of the idea. A pronunciation guide, cross-references to alternate names for similar steps and positions that vary from the Russian to the French or Italian schools, and a bibliography are all invaluable aids.

But the most important supplement is the 15-page pictorial section, drawn by the author, who is both a ballet dancer and a successful teacher. Keyed to the dictionary (and vice-versa), these diagrams show clearly the exact foot, leg, arm, and body positions for the proper execution of many of the more common ballet steps and movements.

Reference books about dance have a harder task than most other reference books, because what they talk about is kinesthetic and visual and can't be captured in words very well. If you're already familiar with ballet you can tell what she is talking about and can picture it; otherwise it's rather vague. Here is a typical entry:

Cabriole [ka-bree-AWL]. Caper. An allegro step in which the extended legs are beaten in the air. Cabrioles are divided into two categories: petite, which are executed at 45 degrees, and grande, which are executed at 90 degrees. The working leg is thrust into the air, the underneath leg follows it and beats against the first leg, sending it higher. The landing is then made on the underneath leg. Cabriole may be done devant, derrière and à la seconde in any given position of the body such as croisé, effacé, écarté, etc.

This is a handy reference book for people studying ballet, but like many reference books in other subjects it requires a bit of background knowledge.

The New Joys of Yiddish

By Leo Rosten; revised by Lawrence Bush

Published by Three Rivers Press, 2001

This is a trade paperback measuring 7" by 9" and running to 458 pages including a brief English-Yiddish glossary at the back, plus 32 pages of preferatory material.

Leo Rosten's original book, The Joys of Yiddish, was a big hit. Since Rosten's death much has changed that has an effect on the book, given that it is more than just a dictionary of Yiddish words in English, but also a commentary on Jewish culture. Bush's revision is more than an update, however. He says in the Introduction:

"Rosten recognized that Yiddishkayt, the pathways and spirit of the language, was finding a new homeland in American culture. Unlike many Yiddish scholars, he delighted in this fact and treasured every Yiddish word or phrase, intonation or sentence structure, that had entered into English usage. Each, to his mind, was a "carrier" of the complete genetic code of Yiddish. In writing The Joys of Yiddish, Rosten was mapping the Yiddish genome.

"The map was incomplete, of course. Rosten left out the double helix of modern Yiddish literature and poetry. He avoided the recombinant material of Yiddish political rhetoric and social criticism. He ignored most of the non-American strains of Yiddish culture. He chose humor, anecdote, and breezy erudition as his best tools because, as he wrote in his preface, "a good story is exceedingly hard for anyone to forget." As a result, certain more sober Yiddishists were unhappy that Rosten, the kibitzer, won the commercial "patent" on Yiddish through the success of Joys. (A punch line from one of his many jokes might serve to express their attitude: "Eh! If I had his voice, I'd sing just as good!")

What this book is is a semi-dictionary of Yiddish words and phrases that have entered the English language, at least in some locales. Unlike the book Anglish/Yinglish, which I reviewed last September 3rd, this one does more than simply provide a definition and pronunciation. It gives colorful illustrations of the words' use, often in the form of anecdotes and jokes, that help provide a rich sense of the words' special unique meaning and flavor. Consequently the entries are often closer to encyclopedia length than dictionary length, and there are far fewer of them than in an ordinary dictionary.

For an example of what is included, here are the first fifteen entries in the "C" sequence, alternate transliterations omitted:

• cabala
  
• Chaim Yankel
  
• chairlady
  
• challah
  
• Chanukah
  
• Chasid
  
• chaver
  
• chazzen
  
• cheder
  
• Chelm
  
• chevra
  
• chillul hashem
  
• chometzdik
  
• chotchke
  
• chozzer
  

Here is one sample entry, a shorter one:

pupik

Pronounced PU (the u of "put") -pik, to rhyme with "look it." From Russian: pupok, "navel."

Navel.

Pupik is used in a variety of broad, colorful expressions - ironic, maledictory, and ribald.
A sheynm dank in pupik ("a pretty thanks in the navel") means "Thanks for nothing."
"Zol vaksn tsibeles in zayn pupik!" - "Onions should grow in his navel!"
"What does he do? He sits around all day looking at his pupik."

A classic definition of an unrealistic, impractical type is this: "He's the kind who worries whether a flea has a pupik."

This is a really fun and educational reference book, a good one to refer to or to read cover to cover.

Handbook of Technical Writing, Seventh Edition

By Gerald J. Alred, Charles T. Brusaw, and Walter E. Oliu.

Published by St. Martin's Press, 2003.

This is a 6" by 9" hardbound book running to 645 pages including the index, plus a preface and special chapters titled, "Five Steps to Successful Writing," "Checklist of the Writing Process," "Topical Key to Alphabetical Entries," and "Topical List of Figures and Model Documents." The book is printed in blue as well as black ink as a way of highlighting information. There is a companion website expanding on the information included in the book.

The Preface begins,

"The seventh edition of the Handbook of Technical Writing, like previous editions, is a comprehensive resource for both academic and professional audiences. The Handbook's nearly 500 entries cover effective print, oral, and electronic communication in technical writing, as well as grammar, style, and usage. This edition has up-to-date coverage of workplace technologies, library and Internet research, and documenting sources, as well as improved treatment of formal reports, job searches, presentations, and visuals."

For an idea of what's included, here is a list of the first fifteen entries in the "D" section:

• dangling modifiers
  
• dashes
  
• data / datum
  
• dates
  
• decreasing-order-of-importance method of development (see order-of-importance method of development)
  
• defective / deficient
  
• defining terms
  
• definite / definitive
  
• definition method of development
  
• description
  
• design (see layout and design)
  
• despite / in spite of
  
• diacritical marks
  
• diagnosis / prognosis
  
• diction
  

The longer of these entries are the ones having to do with methods in technical writing. The shorter entries are those that define elements of grammar and usage and distinguish between similar or commonly confused words.

The prose is efficient, clear, and easy to read, enhancing the usability of this book (and showing off the authors' skills as technical writers).

This is a very useful book for people studying or practicing technical writing or needing guidance in writing clear documentation or instructions.

Lag's Lexicon: A Comprehensive Dictionary and Encyclopaedia of the English Prison of To-Day

Compiled by Paul Tempest

Published by Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1950.

This is a little 5" by 7.5" book bound in green hard covers, running to 232 pages.

Like many reference collections, ours has a few of these fun oddities sprinkled through it. Though it was published in 1950, it seems older because of some of the language (like the hyphenation of "to-day" in the subtitle).

Here's the beginning of the introduction:

This Lag's Lexicon was compiled for a variety of reasons, with the object of entertainment, amusement, or enlightenment. Its apparent uses are manifold, whether looked on as a bedside book to be dipped into or as a reliable reference book.

The amateur authority on slang should derive pleasure in picking it to pieces and finding words which, according to his belief, have an entirely different meaning.

The writer of those crime stories which concern prison life--unless he has had some personal "inside' experience--can be confident of the accuracy of the Lexicon. He need never be guilty of referring to a prison officer or 'screw' as a warder, a 'Peter' as a cell, or 'twirls' as skeleton keys and so on.

Furthermore, no previous age in our island history has offered such unique opportunities for the ordinary peaceful citizen to find himself suddenly thrust behind the barred gates of the prison block. Forewarned is forearmed.

To-day, with the biggest crime wave we have ever known and the new Criminal Justice Act already in force, the national conscience is slowly awakening to the imoprtance of prisons and punishment of the wrongdoer as a social problem which can no longer be ignored.

To the sincere and conscientious prison visitor and lecturer I hope this encyclopaedia will provide the answer to some of those questions which must inevitably come to his mind and which he cannot, for ethical reasons, put to the men for whom he gives up so much of his spare time...

Entries in the book range in length from two lines to several pages (for example, the four-page entry on "executions," which goes into detail about the process in England at the time, and doesn't actually talk much about slang terms and their meanings, interestingly). Many entries are brief encyclopedia entries on topics relating to prisons, rather than definitions of slang terms. Here is a list of the first fifteen entries in the "P" sequence:

• paddy
  
• Padre's Hour
  
• pads, the
  
• pail, food
  
• paint party
  
• painters
  
• palm
  
• Palmolive
  
• pansy
  
• paper
  
• Parcel Post
  
• Parkhurst
  
• pastimes
  
• Paterson, Sir Alexander, M.C., M.A.
  
• Paterson's Farm
  

A fun book potentially useful on very rare occasions.

A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols: Hidden Symbols in Chinese Life and Thought

By Wolfram Eberhard. Translated from the German by G. L. Campbell.

Published by Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986. Original German work published by Eugen Diederichs Verlag, 1983.

This is a 6" by 9" hardbound book running to 332 pages including a brief bibliography.

Because the written Chinese language is pictographic, a dictionary of Chinese symbols has a connection to the language that dictionaries of symbols usually do not. This book is not, however, a dictionary of the Chinese language that pays attention to the symbolism of its words, but a dictionary of symbolism that covers only about 400 Chinese characters. The author chose symbols that relate to everyday life rather than spirituality, and popular and folk culture rather than literary culture.

The book is ordered alphabetically by the English word that translates each symbol. For each entry the English word is given, followed by a simple transliteration of the Chinese word, the actual Chinese character, and then a discussion of the word and its symbolic meaning from ancient times to the present. The discussions of the symbols are clear and very interesting. See references are indicated with an arrow in front of the word referenced, pointing to it. Many entries refer to texts in the Chinese literary canon.

The purpose of the book is to communicate a better understanding of Chinese culture, and it does so in a very accessible and enjoyable way. It's also a useful reference book.

Oxford Rhyming Dictionary

By Clive and Eben Upton.

Published by Oxford University Press, 2004.

This is a 6" by 9.25" black clothbound book running to 659 pages, plus a brief preferatory section including a discussion of rhymes and some pages on "how to use this dictionary."

There are a lot of rhyming dictionaries out there. This one is a top-quality rhyming dictionary based on the pronunciations given in the Oxford Dictionary of Pronunciation for Current English, which of course gives British pronunciations. It's different from some other rhyming dictionaries in that it has two main sections: first a section grouping words by their ending sounds, and second, an index (that makes up a majority of the book's pages) listing all the words that are included and referring the reader to their locations in the first section.

Words with more similar endings are grouped more closely together, but words with less similar but still similar endings are nearby, which makes the book handy for times when a near-rhyme will do. Rhymes of more than one syllable are linked more closely together.

This is a very good rhyming dictionary, but if you're in the United States and you're only going to purchase one, a rhyming dictionary based on American English would be a better bet.

Names and Nicknames of Places & Things

Edited by Laurence Urdang.

Published by G.K. Hall & Co., 1985.

This is a 6.5" by 9.5" clothbound book running to 327 pages including the geographic and subject index, plus a very brief foreword.

The title leaves out the word "dictionary;" what the book is is a dictionary of names and nicknames of places and things, with entries ranging in length from a few words to about a page, describing things or places arranged by their nicknames or other informal names. The author acknowledges the book's incompleteness and cultural bias, which unfortunately seems a little extreme.

For an idea of what's here, the first fifteen entries in the "M" sequence are titled:

• M & S
  
• MacDowell Colony
  
• Macy's
  
• Madison Avenue
  
• Madison Square Garden
  
• Maelstrom, the
  
• Mae West
  
• Mafeking
  
• Maghreb
  
• Magic Valley
  
• Magnificent Mile, the
  
• Magnolia City
  
• Magnolia State, the
  
• magpie houses
  
• Maida Vale
  

Here are a couple of samples:

Strawberry Fields
A Salvation Army orphanage in Liverpool, in the Northwest of England, immortalized in the Beatles song of the same name, which they first recorded in 1967.

Wigan
A town near Manchester, England. Situated in a coal-mining area, Wigan is associated in the minds of the British with the ordinary man-in-the-street, a typically unthinking person representative of the unthinking masses. Music-hall comedians are wont to refer to performances at "Wigan Pier," and that apocryphal place is retained in the title of the book, The Road to Wigan Pier, by George Orwell.

This is a useful book for looking up the meaning and story behind many British and WASP-y American nicknames of places and things.

Hip Hoptionary: The Dictionary of Hip Hop Terminology

By Alonzo Westbrook

Published by Broadway Books, on their Harlem Moon imprint, 2002.

This is a 5" by 7.5" paperback book running to 225 pages, including a list at the end of Hip Hop personalities, plus some introductory notes.

It's really more of a glossary than a dictionary, since only brief definitions are given, without pronunciation or usage notes or etymological information of the kind you'd find in a true dictionary.

The introduction does a good job of expressing the importance of new African American lexicons, referring back to American history from the days of the slave trade up through the 1970's.

For an idea of what's here, the first fifteen entries in the "O" sequence are:

• o
  
• Oaktown
  
• O.E.
  
• off the bat
  
• off the chain, off da' heezy f' geezy, off the dome, off the meat rack, off the meter, off the wall
  
• off the cuff
  
• off the hook
  
• off the titty
  
• off the wanger
  
• OG
  
• OJ
  
• OKC
  
• okie-doke
  
• old school/old skool
  
• old soul
  

Some of the words and phrases I wouldn't have guessed were hip hop terms - I knew "okie-doke" meant okay before hip hop had been born. But I didn't know that it meant "the runaround" or "trickery, up to no good." In some cases, though, a slang term is given with its regular, traditional white American meaning (e.g. on the money: on target). Maybe these slang terms have hip hop roots and I never realized it.

Commonly, I find definitions that I wish were a little richer, especially the ones for words meaning "good." These words all have shades of meaning in their real contexts that are lost if you define them as an exact synonym for "good."

I'd summarize this as a fun and useful book that's disappointingly thin on detail.

Klein's Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language

By Dr. Ernest Klein

Published by Elsevier, 1971.

This is a big, beautiful, red-cloth-bound book measuring 8" by 11.25" and running to 844 pages, plus a brief preface, introduction, transliteration notes, abbreviations, literature consulted, and guide to symbols used.

The full title of the book, from the title page, is actually:

A COMPREHENSIVE
ETYMOLOGICAL DICTIONARY
OF THE
ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Dealing with the origin of words
and their sense development thus illustrating
the history of civilization and culture


This etymological dictionary is widely considered the best. It's got around 55,000 words traced, which is significantly more than other etymological dictionaries. It traces their origin back as far as proto-Indo-European, Tocharian or other earliest theorized languages, and follows their sense development down through history from the present sense. Included in the book, in addition to regular English words, are every known root word found in English, many proper names from myth and from the Bible, scientific and technical words, common first names, and place names.

The first edition was a two-volume work published in 1966 and 1967. The 1971 is a single-volume edition which hasn't been updated but has been reprinted. The newest printing is on acid-free paper.

Opening the book at random and dropping a fingertip on the page randomly, we get the entry for "debacle." This entry is eight lines long (on a three-column page), which is fairly typical if perhaps slightly longer than an average entry. It gives the spelling, pronunciation, a very succinct definition, and then goes into the etymology, beginning with the most recent source. Klein gives the spelling and meaning of the French word in two parts of speech, and then traces its origin and sense development back through Old Provençal and Vulgar Latin. The entry concludes with "See" references to baculus and bacillus, which share the same Latin word origins. It's a concise and satisfying etymological tracing, and its quality makes the size and comprehensiveness of the whole book more impressive.

This is a must-have for reference collections. The other major one to have is Barnhardt's (the updating of Chalmers). Probably Barnhardt's has its adherants. Really, a good reference library should have both, since there are often differences of scholarly opinion on etymology, and each of these books represents a different point of view. If you only want one good dictionary of etymology, however, I recommend this one.

The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations: The Complete Opinionated Guide for the Careful Speaker

By Charles Harrington Elster.

Published by Houghton Mifflin, 1999.

This is a 6" by 9" paperback book running to 426 pages including the bibliograph and a glossary, plus an introduction and a guide to the pronunciation notation used throughout the book.

What the book is is an entertaining guide to the proper pronunciation of some commonly mispronounced words.

Some readers would find this book irritating and snobby, as many prescriptive language books are. For example, there are many cases in the book where the author (who is as opinionated as the subtitle indicates) claims that a word is pronounced incorrectly by 90% of the population. This shows the book to be elitist in intent, really for an audience that wants to feel superior to others. I'm someone who likes to know the proper spelling, usage and pronunciation of words, but even I found myself irritated by the author's upper-class, British, hyper-proper tone (and the books is primarily about American, rather than British, pronunciation). Nevertheless I couldn't put the book down. His discussion of the proper pronunciation of words and the differing opinions of the major authorities and related issues is fascinating and informative. I was surprised to find out how many words I normally mispronounce. His digressions, which are frequent, are also very interesting. (For example, were you aware of Phyfe's rule? That's a rule of thumb regarding English words of two syllables that have a use both as nouns or adjectives and as verbs. According to Phyfe's rule, to which there are many exceptions, words like this have the stress on the first syllable when used as a noun or an adjective and on the second syllable when used as a verb. Some examples are "produce," "detail," "insult," "intrigue," "annex," convert," "object," "perfume," and "rebel.")

The pronunciation notations are simple and clear, employing common-sense English spellings for sounds and using capitalization and bold type to indicate stress. These notations are given for both correct and common incorrect pronunciations (for example: "irony EYE-ruh-nee (like the name Ira + knee). Don't say EYE-ur-nee.")

For a sense of what's included, here are the first fifteen words in the "F" sequence:

• facet
  
• faience
  
• faineant
  
• fait accompli
  
• familial
  
• farrago
  
• February
  
• fecal
  
• fecund
  
• fellatio
  
• feral
  
• ferment
  
• fetid
  
• fetish
  
• fief
  

The choice of words included is somewhat arbitrary, and many commonly misprounounced words, or words pronounced differently by different groups, can be thought of that weren't included. In particular, there are a couple of issues around pronunciation that I find interesting and would like to have seen dealt with somewhere in the book, and those are two questions that seem to relate to class and geography. First there's the case of a number of words that can be stressed on the first or second syllable, like "insurance" and "excess," where stressing the first syllable can sound less pretentious or just more white trash depending on the word and on who you are, and stressing the second syllable can sound either more correct or just pretentious, again depending on the word and on who you are. Second is a number of words that are sometimes pronounced with a short a (like "ham") and sometimes with a long a (like "calm") depending primarily on region within the U.S., but also, I think, on whether you imagine Britain or Continental Europe as the true source of proper pronunciation of words of foreign origin (words like "balsamic" and "Iran"). The author doesn't look into general questions such as these, except just a little bit in passing in discussions of particular words.

In general, the book skims over a lot of issues that would be of interest to sociolinguistics. In fact, the book as a whole would be interesting to some sociolinguistics as an example of how pronunciation communicates class identity. The book would have a strong appeal to people who suffer from class anxiety.

Though it's not exactly authoritative, nor does it really pretend to be, it's a useful book for information on the "proper" pronunciation of words in American speech (or someone's idea of proper pronunciation).

The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs

Edited by Jennifer Speake.

Published by Oxford University Press, 2003.

This is a 5.5" by 8.5" clothbound book running to 375 pages including a thematic bibliography and an index, plus an introduction and list of abbreviations.

The introduction says, "The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs (sic; title is not "Concise" on the title page) provides a general history of proverbs in common use in Britain in the last two hundred years." It later defines a proverb as "a traditional saying which offers advice or presents a moral in a short and pithy manner."

This dictionary presents proverbs in the alphabetic sequence of the first significant word (omitting words like "a," "every," "one," etc.). Numerous cross-references are added to the sequence.

For each proverb, the earliest known example of its use in literature (in any verbal formulation) is given, followed by some other examples (in the style of the Oxford English Dictionary) to show how the use of the proverb in context has changed over time. Additionally, proverbs are given some notes to explain aspects of meaning or to indicate an original source of the proverb outside of English literature (Old French, the Bible, etc.).

The basis of this dictionary is proverbs presently used in British culture, but the book includes common proverbs that originated in the United States as well, like, "There is no such thing as a free lunch" and "Different strokes for different folks."

This is a handy and well-done reference book.

The Social Work Dictionary, 5th Edition

By Robert L. Barker.

Published by NASW Press, 2003.

This is a 7" by 10" paperback book running to 493 pages, including the timeline, plus 37 pages of preferatory material.

This is really the official dictionary of the National Association of Social Workers, who are the authority on social work as it is practiced in the United States. The editorial review board for this dictionary consisted of no fewer than 72 experts and scholars.

Most definitions are a paragraph long. Each page has roughly a dozen terms defined on it (or a few more), which gives you a sense of how many terms are defined in total. Definitions are usually a few sentences long.

The first fifteen terms in the "M" sequence are:

• Machiavellian
  
• macho
  
• macro orientation
  
• macro practice
  
• macroeconomics
  
• macular degeneration
  
• MAGI
  
• magical thinking
  
• magistrates court
  
• magnet school assistance program
  
• magnet schools
  
• magnetic resonance imaging
  
• maim
  
• mainframe
  
• "mainlining"
  

As you can see from the above list, the dictionary includes terms from a number of fields. Social work practice requires knowledge of medicine, education, psychology, law, economics, a little politics, and other things, so the dictionary defines terms from all of those disciplines straightforwardly. The terms "macro orientation" and "macro practice" are the only ones on the above list that are specialized terms for social work.

This is a very handy reference for social workers or social work students.

The Complete Dictionary of Sexology

Robert T. Francoeur, Editor-in-Chief.

Published by Continuum, 1995.

This is a 6" by 9" paperback book running to 790 pages, plus a brief preface, acknowledgments, and a seven page introduction.

It's a dictionary of words having to do with sex. The words are sometimes scientific and technical, and sometimes more common. (The editors excluded various types of slang words, a decision which kept the book to a reasonable-sized single volume.)

Definitions range in length from brief sentences (or a few synonyms) to full paragraphs or sometimes longer; typically a page has a half-dozen to a dozen definitions on it. Definitions usually end with a few see also references and in some cases an item or two for further reading.

For an idea of what's in here, here is the full list of entries in the "J" sequence (one of the smaller sequences):

• Jacquemier's sign
  
• janiceps
  
• Jarisch-Herxheimer reaction
  
• jealousy, sexual
  
• Jennifer fever
  
• Jobst breast support
  
• Jocasta complex
  
• jock itch
  
• Jorgensen, Christine
  
• Jung, Carl
  
• jus primae noctis (L.) See droit du seigneur.
  
• juvenile
  
• juvenile paresis
  
• juvenilism, paraphilic
  

Intriguing words, no?

This is quite a useful book, appropriate for research or reading aloud with a friend.

Dictionary of Minor Planet Names, Fifth Edition

By Lutz D. Schmadel.

Published by Springer Verlag, 2003.

This is an 8" by 10" hardbound book running to 992 pages including appendices, references, and an index of minor planet names, plus two prefaces and two forewords.

The book is primarily a catalog of the names of all of the "minor planets" (commonly known as asteroids and suchlike) found and given names by 2002 - 10,038 in all, out of a total of 52224 planets actually discovered and numbered. In this catalog the planets (or minor planets or planetoids) are listed not in alphabetic order but in the order of their official ordinal number designation, which is a practice that goes far back into the history of modern astronomy. (Actually, it was in 1852 with the discovery of planet Melpomene that astronomers first gave up on assigning each celestial object a special symbol and started using ordinal numbers for them.) For each minor planet included, its number and name is given, along with the reason for its name, the details of its discovery (name of discoverer(s), location and date), and a code referring to the source of information on the name.

There are eleven appendices in the book:

1. Discoverers in Alphabetical Order
   
2. Discoverers Ranking List
   
3. Corporate Discoverers
   
4. Discovery Places in Alphabetical Order
   
5. Discovery Places Ranking List
   
6. Categories of Minor Planet Names
   
7. Names Classification by Countries
   
8. Nobel Laureates
   
9. IAU Officers
   
10. Special Type Numbered Minor Planets
    
11. Minor Planet Names with Unknown Meaning
    

An interesting thing about the book is how much it says about the namesakes of each named planet. Most of the names are for scientists, but there are planets named after many other people and things. Here is the full entry for planet Triathlon:

(10346) Triathlon
1992 GA₁. Discovered 1992 Apr. 2 by C. S. Shoemaker and D. H. Levy at Palomar.
     Since Pam Truty founded the Burn Lake Triathlon in Las Cruces, New Mexico, in 1984, the relay team of Wendee Wallach-Levy {see planet (6485)}, Laura Wright and Barbara Pardo has (sic) won medals every year, including 14 golds. Laura has also done more than 30 years volunteer work for the American Red Cross.
(M 36949)

This is quite an interesting book. What's missing, unless I don't know how to see it, is information that would tell an astronomer where in the sky one of these planets could be found with a powerful enough telescope, or what its orbit is. That information must be in another source.

The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems

By Florian Coulmas.

Published by Blackwell, 1996. Copyright held by the author.

This is a hardbound book measuring 7" by 10" and running 603 pages including the bibliography, plus 28 pages of preferatory material that include a long list of figures, a long list of tables, a preface, acknowldgements, and a page on abbreviations and notational conventions used. (There is no index in the book.)

The preface begins: "The principle purpose of this encyclopedia is to provide basic concise information on the writing systems, scripts and orthographies of the world's major languages, and about theoretically important issues concerning the relationship between speech and writing." Further in the preface the author says,

"Each of the writing systems dealt with in this volume warrants full monograph treatment. The same is true of entries dealing with technical aspects of writing, such as handwriting, printing and word processing; practical problems, such as decipherment, alphabet making and spelling reform; and theoretical issues, such as distinguishing writing from pre-writing and other notational systems, typology of writing systems, functions of writing, etc. Major writing systems and writing systems not described in generally accessible works are described and illustrated in detail, and major theoretical problems are discussed in a manner that familiarizes the reader with the relevant issues."

Entries range from a few lines to several pages in length.

This is a very substantial reference book on writing systems and an amazing achievement when you consider that it is the work of a single person.

One major strength of the book is that it is very richly illustrated with figures and tables, showing examples of all of the writing systems discussed.

As an example of the kind of things that are covered, the first fifteen entries in the "L" sequence are:

• L, l
  
• Landa alphabet
  
• Lao writing
  
• Lapis Niger
  
• Latin alphabet
  
• Latinxua
  
• Lepcha script
  
• Lepsius, Karl Richard
  
• letter
  
• letter names
  
• letter recognition
  
• lettering
  
• ligature
  
• Limbu script
  
• Linear A
  

This is a very impressive, useful and fascinating reference book.

A Dictionary of Stylistics

By Katie Wales

Published by Longman, 1990.

This is a 6" by 9" paperback book running to 504 pages including the bibliography, plus a brief introduction.

Stylistics is a relatively new area of linguistics having to do with analysis of style in texts. According to this book's introduction, it's a cross-disciplinary field, incorporating vocabulary from discourse analysis, text linguistics, contemporary literary theory, communication theory, as well as traditional linguistics and literary theory and other related fields. The introduction says, "This book is ... designed both as a dictionary and as a guide-book: not only to explain the meaning of terms, but also overall to give a general picture of the nature and aims of stylistics, its approaches, methodologies and insights, its historical origins and potential developments, in the hopes of facilitating and stimulating further study." It is primarily aimed at undergraduates in introductory courses in stylistics or literary studies; for grad students; and for foreign students and English teachers engaged in the analysis of written and spoken language.

For a sense of what's included, the first fifteen entries in the dictionary, which cover eight pages, are:

• a-verse
  
• aberrant decoding
  
• absence
  
• absolute clause
  
• abstract nouns
  
• absurd, theatre of the
  
• accent; accentuation
  
• acceptability
  
• acronym
  
• act
  
• actant
  
• actant
  
• action; actional code
  
• active
  
• actualiztion
  

The entry for "act" runs to just over a half a page and gives four separate meanings: the division of a play or opera; the smallest unit of conversational behavior (in discourse analysis); the idea of a deed in narratology; and the activity of producing utterances within the context of teller, tale and reader in narration. In the introduction, the author points out that one purpose of the book is to help readers who encounter terms that are used in different ways in the different disciplines on which the study of stylistics relies. Giving multiple definitions of terms to show how they can be used differently in stylistics is a useful feature of the book.

As you can see, the book covers an extremely wide territory. Considering the breadth of its subject matter the book seems woefully incomplete in terms of the vocabulary that it includes and doesn't include. Why include just some grammatical terms and just some ideas from deconstruction theory, when many more could be relevant to the study of stylistics? To be fair to the author, her field of study is stylistics and she no doubt selected terms that were the most likely to be encountered.

Incomplete as the book may be, its entries are written well, illuminating subjects that often suffer from obscurity. Not much theoretical background is assumed.

This is a useful book for someone interested in stylistics or the study of texts in general.

The Atlas of Languages: The Origin and Development of Languages Throughout the World

Consultant Editors: Bernard Comrie, Stephen Matthews, and Maria Polinsky

Published by Facts on File, 1996

This is a hardbound book, 9" by 12", running 224 colorful, illustrated pages.

This is a book about the world's languages, differing from many other language books in the extensive use of maps, diagrams and photo-illustrations. As an example of how it mixes text with graphics, pages 41 and 42, in the section of the book on "Europe and Eurasia," have two paragraphs of text (just a little less than on most pages in the book), a large map of Asia centered on Sibera that has language-areas color-coded to show their historical relationships, some text labeling that map, a box with a table showing the agglutinating characteristic of Altaic languages through seven cases, and two smaller photographs illustrating the Magyar and the Mongol cultures, with a few sentences about each.

The information is presented partially systematically and partially serendipidously. For each region of the world there are lists of languages, maps, text describing those languages and their relationships, as well as explanations of various, semi-random facts in comparative linguistics.

Curiously, the section on "Africa and the Middle East" is almost entirely about Africa and barely touches on the Middle East, a major disappointment.

Almost more of a popular non-fiction than an academic reference book, The Atlas of Languages is not terribly useful for looking up specific facts, but at least makes for fascinating reading.