Back

Reference

12 products

Clear all
Sort by:
Filter to:

Price range

£19.99£2.50
The Superior Person's Book of Words
Peter Bowler
Peter Bowler’s 'superior person' has command of words such as egregious, quotidian and uxorious, and 'we yield to him in debate, not because his arguments are more cogent, but because they are less intelligible'. This A–Z of 500 words could set the reader on the road to superiority. The definitions are accompanied by the all-important notes on usage, lest one lose lexical credibility.

£8.99

now
£3.99
How to Sound Really Clever
600 Words You Need to Know
Hubert van den Bergh
The sequel to How to Sound Clever, this compendium presents over 600 useful and slightly more unusual words. Each entry is presented with clear definitions and guidance on pronunciation and usage, along with the word’s linguistic roots and everyday examples. Associated idioms such as ‘feet of clay’ are explored through stories from history, mythology and daily life.

£12.99

now
£4.99
Who's Whose?
A No-Nonsense Guide to Easily Confused Words
Philip Gooden
Compliment or complement? Stationary or stationery? This entertaining and sympathetic (or empathetic?) A–Z guide lists common mistakes, with their Embarrassment Rating, an explanation of why they are troublesome and tips on how to avoid perpetrating (or perpetuating?) them.

£10.99

now
£4.99
Encarta Book of Quotations
Bill Swainson
From Hank Aaron (b.1934), an American baseball star, to the Chilean poet Raul Zurita (b. 1951), this book contains 25,000 quotations by more than 6,200 authors. International in scope, the listings are also up to date, with about half the quotations taken from the last 100 years. The clearly laid-out entries give authors' dates, sources for the quotations and contextual notes; and the keyword and thematic indexes make it easy to find the quotation you want.

£30.00

now
£11.99
The Word at War
World War Two in 100 Phrases
Philip Gooden;Peter Lewis
From 'concentration camps' to 'Germanophobia', the authors' selection of words and phrases born of the Second World War (and some left over from the First) has been arranged chronologically to follow the course of the conflict through its linguistic inventions. In each of the 15 chapters, they explore the derivations and the stories behind the popular terms and phraseology of the period – in European and Axis nations as well as Britain and the USA.

£7.99

now
£2.50
Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide
How to Read and What to Read Next
Nick Rennison
A guide to more than 350 major authors and 4,000 books with a short article on style, influences, settings, theme and salient works for each author. For the 12 main genres, directions are provided to similar books by other authors, books with similar themes and popular books.

£14.99

now
£9.99
Bloomsbury Thesaurus
New edition
Fran Alexander
This Thesaurus uses a thematic classification of the English language, with more than 13,000 key entries arranged in over 800 categories and with hundreds of quotations illustrating usage.

£20.00

now
£9.99
The Superior Person's Third Book of Words
Peter Bowler
Why say 'willy-nilly' when you could say 'nolens volens'? Peter Bowler's third collection of verbarian exotica aims to fortify your vocabulary and allow you to assert your ascendancy 'at the traffic lights of life', possibly. Along with practical definitions for words like haptephobia (fear of being touched) and oscitancy (yawning), Bowler relates cheerful anecdotes of eccentric scholars, idiotic concepts, oddities of the intellectual life and the odd deliberate mistake.

£9.99

now
£3.99
National Birds of the World
Ron Toft
From Angola's Red-Crested Turaco to Zimbabwe's African Fish-Eagle, more than 90 avian species have been adopted as official symbols of national identity. Each bird is pictured and described in this comprehensive guide, which features data such as size, diet and habitat alongside an explanation of reasons for the bird's use as a national emblem, information on its conservation status and examples of its prevalence in the stamps, coats of arms and wider culture of its country. Foreword by Chris Packham.

£25.00

now
£5.99
Dictionary of Public Policy and Administration
Jay Shafritz

£24.99

now
£6.99
Dent's Modern Tribes
The Secret Languages of Britain
Susie Dent
Hobbies and professions all have their unique and colourful jargon, which is often completely baffling to outsiders. But now Countdown’s resident word expert has decoded these mysterious idioms by interviewing hundreds of members of Britain’s ‘tribes’, from twitchers to spies. Here she presents the idiosyncratic vocabulary that she has learned, so that you too can discover why bin collectors love a ‘Tiffany’, what a publisher means by ‘deckle’ and how ticket inspectors discreetly request back-up.

£14.99

now
£5.99
The Eponym Dictionary of Birds
Bo Beolens;Michael Watkins;Michael Grayson et al;et al

£60.00

now
£19.99