500 Words You Should Know

A book to inspire logophiles and the rest of us to use uncommon words in their correct context.

Perhaps you have wanted to ameliorate your atavistic lexicon, engage in a little intellectual badinage or you have been discombobulated by tricky diction? 500 Words You Should Know has you covered. This book will inspire the reader to use uncommon words in their correct context, utilize the English language to its full potential and test themselves on the words they think they already know.

It is a book for the appreciator of correct usage and contains words you thought you knew (decimate, caveat, nemesis), words you should know (euphemism, diatribe, tautology) and just a few that you might want to know (peripatetic, shibboleth, callipygian).

This essential cornucopia of 500 of the best, trickiest and oft-misused words in the English language are arranged thematically. Each word is dissected, with a laconic gloss of etymology and historical and modern usage, to give a full understanding and effectively adopt the word into vocabulary in its proper context.

1. Terms of Endearment, Respect and Admiration - it's easy to confuse complement and compliment

2. Terms of Abuse, Criticism and Mild Contempt - the Xbox player had an etoliated look about him

3. It Depends on My Mood - a frat house is likely to be rabelaisian at least some of the time

4. Let's Give It Some Thought - it's best to be discrete when talking about disparate opinions

5. The Rough with the Smooth - celebrity culture feeds on schadenfreude

6. Heaven, Hell and the Bits in Between - weekends are for peregrinations around the mall

7. Science and the Arts - some readers of this book may be guilty of elision.

Readers interested in everything that eclectic English has to offer, who wish to celebrate its majesty and depth and to ensure that they always use the language pedantically, this veracious cornucopia of knowledge will have them confabulating with the literary cognoscenti in no time.

Caroline Taggart worked in publishing as an editor of popular nonfiction for 30 years. She is the author of I Used to Know That, which became a Sunday Times bestseller and the co-author of more books which include My Grammar and I (or should that be "me"?). She has appeared frequently on television and on national and regional radio in the UK, talking about language, grammar and Pythagoras's theorem. Her website is carolinetaggart.co.uk and you can follow her on Twitter @citaggart.