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ADULT LITERACY GUIDES & HANDBOOKS. This is a tongue-in-cheek guide to words that any smart, well-educated, pretentious person should be able to drop into cocktail conversation.The reader is encouraged to toss off words such as 'Disestablishmentarianism', 'descant', and 'autodidactic', proving, if not the value of a good education, at least the appearance of a good education.Each word is accompanied by a pronunciation guide and a sentence illustrating its use. Some of the sentences are made up, while others are well-known quotations.
Funny because it's true. From the creator of the viral sensation "10 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings" comes the must-have book you never knew you needed, 100 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings. In it, you will learn how to appear smart in less than half the time it takes to actually learn anything. You know those subtle tricks your coworkers are all guilty of? The constant nodding, pretend concentration, useless rhetorical questions? These tricks make them seem like they know what they’re doing when in fact they have no clue. This behavior is so ingrained, so subtle, and so often mistaken for true intelligence that identifying it, calling it out, or compiling it into an exhaustive digest has never been attempted. Until now. Complete with illustrated tips, examples, and scenarios, 100 Tricks gives you actionable ways to use words like “actionable,” in order to sound smart. Every type of meeting is covered, from general meetings where you stopped paying attention almost immediately, to one-on-one meetings you zoned out on, to impromptu meetings you were painfully subjected to at the last minute. It’s all here. Open this book to any page and find an easy-to-digest trick with an even easier-to-digest illustration, guiding you on: how to nail the big meeting by pacing and nodding most effective ways to listen to your coworkers while still completely ignoring them the key to making your presentations “interactive.” If you hadn’t noticed these behaviors before, you will see them now—from your colleagues, your managers, and soon yourself. Each trick is a mirror to the reality of what happens in meetings, told in the form of hilariously bad advice—advice that you might just want to take. But probably not. But maybe.
The ultimate word book for aspiring intellectuals! The most compendious collection of words for aspiring scholars, this book helps you hold your own in intellectual discourse. Featuring 2,400 sophisticated, obscure, and obtuse terms, each page provides you with the definitions you need to know to lock academic horns with the clerisy. From antebellum and eleemosynary to impasto and putative, you will quickly master hundreds of erudite phrases that will improve your conversational elegance. Complete with definitions and sample sentences for each entry, The Big Book of Words You Should Know to Sound Smart will elevate your lexicon as you impress the susurration out of the perfervid hoi polloi.
This title offers a fascinating look at the vocabulary of science and technology. Thoughtfully chosen by the editors of the American Heritage® Dictionaries, these words will stimulate inquisitive minds to explore new terrain and challenge long-standing science buffs to measure up. Covering a wide variety of scientific fields—from evolution and ecology to physics and computer science—the words are representative of the vocabulary required to understand the most important concepts of science. Each term is defined and explained in clear, nonscientific language, with examples showing the reader the importance of the word both in its field and in daily life. Many entries have extra features explaining word origins or providing fun facts and enlightening details. Key illustrations make the abstract comprehensible. Subjects discussed include absolute zero, dendrochronology, game theory, histone, Kuiper belt, Munchausen syndrome, piezoelectric effect, rain shadow, time dilation, and xerophyte. A great graduation gift or reward for the expert in the house, 100 Science Words Every College Graduate Should Know is sure to delight, surprise, and inspire everyone interested in the language of science and technology.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • For anyone who wants to learn a foreign language, this is the method that will finally make the words stick. “A brilliant and thoroughly modern guide to learning new languages.”—Gary Marcus, cognitive psychologist and author of the New York Times bestseller Guitar Zero At thirty years old, Gabriel Wyner speaks six languages fluently. He didn’t learn them in school—who does? Rather, he learned them in the past few years, working on his own and practicing on the subway, using simple techniques and free online resources—and here he wants to show others what he’s discovered. Starting with pronunciation, you’ll learn how to rewire your ears and turn foreign sounds into familiar sounds. You’ll retrain your tongue to produce those sounds accurately, using tricks from opera singers and actors. Next, you’ll begin to tackle words, and connect sounds and spellings to imagery rather than translations, which will enable you to think in a foreign language. And with the help of sophisticated spaced-repetition techniques, you’ll be able to memorize hundreds of words a month in minutes every day. This is brain hacking at its most exciting, taking what we know about neuroscience and linguistics and using it to create the most efficient and enjoyable way to learn a foreign language in the spare minutes of your day.
What should the vocabulary of a well-rounded high school graduate be like? These 100 words provide the starting point in answering that question. The list is representative of the words that serious students will encounter in their coursework and will come to use as adults, whether in conversation or while reading the daily newspaper. Each word is fully defined and shown in context with example sentences from well-known authors. 100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know is a must-have for every grad, perfect for building vocabulary, quizzing friends and family — and just having fun.
The areas covered in the book are ideas and theories; philosophy and religion; politics and government; the fine arts, humanities, and social sciences; science and technology; law and justice; and business and economics. Beginning students can pick up individual words and put them in sentences of their own making, no matter how simple, and advanced students can get a better understanding of context by reading the sample sentences in the book. Suitable for self-study, building vocabulary, and improving speaking and reading skills.
