IF YOU HAVE EVER
FELT the paralyzing and strangling helplessness of hunting for the
right word when you need it the most, then you know the real value of a
rich vocabulary. There is no man on earth so alone as the one who is
addressing a group of associates and, at the moment of putting across
an "idea" which may make the future for him, finds himself struggling
hopelessly for the right word to convey that idea. He is alone then ;
there is no one who can help him, no matter how much we may wish to. He
is alone with a mind that is struggling valiantly to broadcast the
right word conveying the right idea.
Unless the right
word is immediately available, the idea may as well have died at the
very moment of conception. Remember there is more truth than poetry to
the old jingle "... for want of a horseshoe nail a kingdom was lost."
It is equally true that for the lack of a single word one's whole
future may be lost.
This volume is a truly splendid
collection of related vocabularies so arranged that the user can place
his finger immediately upon the category of words that he needs for use
or for study. To make these collections even more readily accessible
for use and study, the collections of words have been divided
vertically into groups. These are the major divisions for all words of
verbs, adjectives, and nouns, the inverse order to the one by which we
learned our wards as children, but the correct order in which we must
learn our words as adults to improve and enrich our vocabularies.