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Title: Just the hard words
Review: I chanced upon the hardbound 1971 edition of this at a library sale. Wow! This is exactly what I was looking for when I bought the "Oxford Essential Dictionary of Difficult Words." I felt that Oxford had the right idea but their execution was disappointing (inclusion of too many Easy Words and omission of some oft-encountered Difficult ones.) This book from the Times seems to have been undertaken with exactly the right editorial philosophy.Except - I must agree with at least one reviewer who complained that too many of the words are specialized technical, medical, legal and scientific terms which the average reader is unlikely to encounter. This is a weakness, and because of it (as well as a certain vagueness & incompleteness of many definitions) I must take away a star.Still, this book has "succedaneum" and the Oxford book does not. Winner: the Times.
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