A Concise Dictionary of Correct English [antikvár]

Préfacé This book is intended for those who would like to brush up their English grammar and be guided round some of the more common pitfalls in the use of English. It is hoped that those who find the book useful may be led on to a study of those much greater works to which all students of English usage are indebted, and from which I have often and gratefully drawn: Eric Partridge's Usage and Abusage, Fowler's Modern English Usage, and Gowers' Complete Plain Words (revised by Fraser) which, though initially commissioned to improve Civil Service English, remains perhaps the best guide to correct English for the general reader. I gladly record also my debt to The Concise Oxford Dictionary, from which I have taken most of the definitions I have quoted, by permission of Oxford University Press. Many of the entries in the following pages require the reader to have a working knowledge of the principal parts of speech. Victims of the regrettable failure of English schools, during the past fifteen years or so, to supply this knowledge are invited to begin their perusal of this boük by studying the entries under verb, noun, adverb, adjective, pronoun, preposition and conjunction, together with those under sentence and clause. If any entry contains a word in bold print, that word has an entry to itself at the appropriate place alphabetically. The following abbreviations are used: C.O.D The Concise Oxford Dictionary (The Clarendon Press, Oxford) Gowers The Complete Plain Words, by Sir Ernest Gowers, revised by Sir Bruce Fraser (H.M.S.O.) Fowler A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, by H. W. Fowler (The Clarendon Press, Oxford) Partridge Usage and Abusage, by Eric Partridge (Hamish Hamilton Ltd) I am grateful to my wife for checking the typescript, to Mrs Stella Lister for typing it, and to all the journalists, broadcasters and writers (notably the authors of the stunningly illiterate Cambridge Students' Pro-spectus, 1978) who have supplied the examples of English I have cited. None has been invented. Keston, Kent 1979 B. A. P.