The seed for this book was planted four years ago. I was reading Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue and among its countless treasures I discovered a word (which you will learn in due course) whose unfashionably flaccid meaning quite transfixed me: "a mild desire, a wish or urge too slight to lead to action."
Endangered Words: A Collection of Rare Gems for Word Lovers ~ by Simon Hertnon, 2009, vocabulary, 224 pages
When a word perfectly captures a human truth, humans respond to it in the same way that they respond to a beautiful melody. They smile. They nod their heads. They tell others of their discovery. So says Simon Hertnon in his introduction to Endangered Words. He provides one hundred hand-selected rarities and breathes life into them with his lucid descriptions of their meaning and engaging examples of their usage.
Thanks to this book, you won't have to be at a loss for words or reach for the clichéd and commonplace. The English language is brimming with alternatives, and this book offers the cream of the crop. Filled with words to be treasured for their elegant precision, this is the perfect handbook for writers and an fun read for anyone with an appetite for the very brightest gems of the English language.
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