Review: The Superior Person’s Book of Words by Peter Bowler

by Chriss Cornish published: December 19, 2007 No Comments

This Book Is About

A dictionary for those who perceive a difference, a handbook for Superior Persons who love words. Are you a rasorial searcher after words? Are nouns your bread? Adjectives your butter? Verbs your salad? Adverbs your house dressing? Well, then, this is the book to shiver your futtocks! Put an end to fopdoody speech; amaze your friends, baffle your enemies, write interoffice memos to end all discussion!

A Superior Person is not defined by income, class, or sex. A Superior Person uses Superior Speech. And, if Aristotle’s definition of art as something both entertaining and edifying is still toasted with glee, then there’s art a-chock-a-block in Mr. Bowler’s dictionary-a funny, useful, and elevating little book.

My Thoughts On This Book

I got this great little dictionary of unusual and grandiloquent words from my Dad as a graduation present. I love it. I’ve read through it about a dozen times. I kept it at my desk when John and I worked at the SFSU bookstore and used it to pick a new word-of-the-day.

You may be raising an eyebrow and wondering what could be so fun about reading a dictionary, but this isn’t your dry and dull New Collegiate or Websters. Superior Person’s Words is written with a tongue-in-cheek wit and eye to the practical. This is one dictionary that doesn’t just tell you definitions for hard words, it gives you practical guidance and creative suggestions for their use; from the insult-obscure to calling in sick, from confusing people to complimenting them.

As the author/compiler says in the prolegomena (introduction), “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…”

Here’s a couple sample definitions from The Superior Person’s Book of Words:

Economics

An arcane language, used by its own cognoscenti for reviewing past events in the production and distribution of wealth. There are some who would define economics as a science rather than a language; but, in the absence of any evidence that future events can be predicted by economists on the basis of fixed laws, this approach can hardly be supported by the objective lexicographer.