Words have intrinsic power
354111
I loved it.  Yes, it was short, but the simplest things are the easiest to apply. Words have power and high and low vibrations.  We often choose low vibration words without realizing it (poor, fat, tired, ugly).  I have been trying to replace those words and I honestly feel happier and more hopeful.  You can apply this to more than money issues, just choose the best word to apply to your issue.  It is funny, as I think the word, wealthy, over and over, my mind really does open and focus on ways to improve my business or create new one.  If I focus on, poor, my brain goes to what I lack which does not help at all in improving.
3146215
Great, fun book of collective nouns and their history.  Great for browsing.  Any word lover will enjoy; well worth having on your shelf!
455169
Language Planning and Social Change delivers a powerful message.  Its varied examples have impact.  Its definition of language planning distills our understanding of the subject, leading us in a direction that may one day produce a viable theory.  Cooper's willingness to step outside of the world of linguistics gives us a fresh view, reminding us that language does not exist in a vacuum, that it functions as part of a social system.  Dividing that social system into elites, counterelites, and the masses may appear too simplistic to some, but simplicity seems to hold the key to understanding Cooper's vision.  In terms of language planning, Cooper may be barking up the wrong tree, but at least he's barking up some tree!  If more people keep barking, maybe one day we'll have a workable theory of language planning and social change!
4288542
Anyone who wants o understand the true meaning of a word in the English language should have at least one of these in their possession.
3713078
This is a lucid, linguistically savvy account of the verb in Ancient Greek. It is a necessary and indispensable tool for Greek prose composition, and it makes a worthy modern successor to Goodwin (although Goodwin is still very useful and exhaustive).
1155780
An excellent introduction to commonly misused words.  Although

basic, the book could be a useful tool for the average speaker

and writer of English.
1075814
This book was so beautifully written with so many important lessons and messages. The power of the written word is inescapable. Writing is such an art, this book demonstrates its impact.
45388
I read this book and I just loved it!! Our words are so powerful and we must learn how to use them as well as utilize them to advance in today's society. Great read!!
1704951
This book does a fine job of explaining the grammar and basic vocabulary of an artificial language designed to test the "Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis"--that the functioning of the human mind is very strongly influenced by the language in which one thinks.  Loglan goes well beyond a more conventional artificial language like Esperanto--which was mostly designed just to be easy to learn so as to become a quasi-universal European language.  Logan, however, was designed with a much greater ambition--that of building a language upon the foundation of symbolic logic.  It is interesting to note that the single-sylable Loglan word "o" corresponds to the English mouthful "logically equivalent".  In constructing the vocabulary of Logan James Cook Brown has worked to reach beyond the languages of Western Europe.  English, Mandarin Chinese, Hindi, Russian, Spanish, French, Japanese, and German were used in formulating the vocabulary of Loglan.
2413602
After such an exhaustive title there's no need for me to explain what this book covers. Faithful readers of my entries already know I am mad keen on English vocabulary, and this little treasure has proven most illustrative.

I first gazed over the table of contents, which is a list of the terms explored, and tried finding some which I already knew. I was pleasantly surprised at recognizing several of them:

aglet, which is the plastic casing which seals off the end of a shoelace

borborygmus, the gurgling sounds emitted from the stomach

crozier, the ceremonial shepherd's crook bourne by bishops, cardinals, and the Pope

fontanelle, the soft spot on a baby's head

interrobang, a double-duty punctuation mark that looks like this ?!

philtrum, the small indentation between the upper lip and nose

Of course I was terribly interested in the many other words I'd never learned. Some of the more interesting ones include:

caruncula, the tiny pink corner of the eyeball (and the medical term for "sleepy dust" is rheum, which accumulates in the caruncula)

drupelets, the little globules that compose a raspberry or blackberry

grawlix, a string of symbols used to represent a spoken obscenity in a cartoon

muselet, the small wire cage used to keep the cork in place on a champagne bottle

purlicue, the span of measurement made between the extension of the index finger and thumb
rowel, the spiked, revolving wheel located at the tip of a spur on a cowboy boot

tmesis, the deliberate hyphenation of a word for effect (i.e., un-freaking-fair)

The authors not only elaborate as to what each word describes, but many articles list similar terms as well. An example is the entry for tmesis, which also elucidates the reader on other lesser-heard figures of speech, such as antonomasia (using a proper name to describe someone, such as "She's such a Martha Stewart" for a woman who is freakishly obsessed with crafting overdone dinner parties) and metonymy (using the name of a facet of something to describe the thing in it's entirety, such as referring to Harrisburg when one really means the state government of the Commonwealth).

Each entry's language of origin and, where applicable, inventor (grawlix is apparently but one of a lexicon of cartoon terms coined by Mort Walker, author of the venerated strip Beetle Bailey) are very capably discussed as well.

The Whatchamacallit is certain to entertain and edify the vocabularean in all of us.
3767221
The word power has the ability to make even the least squeamish among us flinch. It can call to mind images of violence, abuse, and selfishness. When we hear the word power, we think of Lord Actons saying, Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It is bad guys who have power, we thinkeven though it was He-Man, not Skeletor, who said I have the power in every episode of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Even people who want to use their power for good (so common knowledge tells us) must wield it cynically, unable to keep themselves from being dirtied by it. People who don't want to compromise must avoid power at all costs.

Andy Crouch will have none of this kind of thinking. His contention, in his book Playing God: Redeeming the Gift of Power, is that power is good. It is a gift. It is, he writes, the ability to make something of the world (17). He sets out to show us in this book what power was meant to be, and what it still can be. It is not always a zero-sum game, in which my increase in power means a decrease in someone elses. We have been taught to think this way through the influence of thinkers like Nietzsche and Foucault, and it is reinforced during even the most civilly contested electionswhich theoretically exist, somewhere. No, the best kind of power is when powerful people create new power in other people without the total power being reduced, as when a teacher teaches a student. In other words, not all power is domination. When we believe that all power is domination, and that the ultimate nature of reality is a power struggle, we believe a lie.

Instead, Crouch argues that the ultimate nature of reality is that God created us to bear his image. When we fail to worship God as his image bearers, we worship idols. The question is whether we are making idolsinvesting created things with ultimate significanceor whether we are being idols in the sense of Genesis 1:26, images and signs of the ultimate truth about the world (97). The bad uses of power that we see on a regular basis are not the inevitable result of the nature of power itself. Rather, abuses of power are brought on by idolatry, and in the beginning it was not so.

Probably the most eye-opening parts of this book for me were the chapters The Hiddenness of Power and The Lure of Privilege. I am, like Crouch, a white male citizen of the United States. By virtue of those three things alone (not to mention other factors like education), I am privileged, and in ways that are mostly invisible to me. For example, I once heard a few friends, who were women, talk about their experiences of hearing whistles and catcalls as they walked down the street. Before hearing that conversation, I thought that sort of thing only happened in the movies (and old ones, at that), not in real life. I have never had that degrading experience, merely because being a man has granted me certain privileges that I did not ask for, and that I mostly take for granted. Crouch writes of Jesus that while he did not give up exercising power, he did give up the privilege and status that could have accrued to his power. Im not entirely sure I agree with Crouchs precise distinction between privilege and status, but I do agree that inherited power can be good at some times and bad at others.

I haven't even touched on Crouchs chapters on institutions, which are a helpful challenge to people who are suspicious of institutional power. This book is worth pondering slowly, and perhaps with a group of people. I found it difficult to read quickly. It is not that Crouchs prose is undecipherable; he is in fact a clear and lucid writer. But his subject matter is such that I had to pause frequently and reflect on what he was saying. This book is worth reading, and re-reading, especially for anyone who is suspicious of or cynical about power.

Note: Thanks to InterVarsity Press for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
4118890
If you love words and want to use them to wow or perplex your erstwhile friends or foes, this book is a hoot to read. For a writer, this is a valuable resource: a fresh set of expletives that can be used in polite company (maybe), brand-new words, seldom-heard opposites, and more. I am delighted to get this off a 15-year wish list and add this book to my personal writing resource library.
3057122
It's been said that language is what differentiates humans from the apes.  But why language?  Why not hawaiian shirts?  Senator Hayakawa's short book explains why language, and particularly meaning, is so important.  It  stands alone on its own merits, or as an elegant frame to the debate  addressed in Korzybski's monolithic 1933 work, _Science and Sanity._
Ever  been in an argument?  Ever get hot and bothered, maybe even start shouting,  until you eventually realize that your disagreement is over the definition  of terms?  And did you ever stop to consider that there might be more than  two sides to every story - maybe an infinite number?  Come along as  Hayakawa examines these issues in great detail.
The style of the book is  so lucid, you'll almost feel as if you're being reminded of things you've  always known.  Does the book reveal universal truth?  Or maybe just a  skillful command of language?
I recommend this to any human who uses  language to communicate or think.  You'll never look at Hillary Clinton's  "politics of meaning" the same way again.
527108
I have a friend that uses this word all the time in replying to text messages & posts on fb. I got it for him for an early Christmas present, and he loves it!
2541635
A lot of the words are known by any intelligent person. A few give clarification between words that can be confused (i.e. Flaunt and flout). A handful are so highly selective, I don't know how or when they'd be used.
3527473
I am an author, writer, intelligence analyst, and graduate school instructor. In all those undertakings, I have long since come to understand the power of words - individual words, phrases, combinations of words, etc.  The impact of words is often underestimated, poorly appreciated, and misunderstood. Whether in intelligence, academia, or simply in the larger professional world, words - particularly in writing - are the most important tool in the human communication inventory.

Dr Bassett does an excellent job of explaining not only the importance of words, but how they influence us, motivate us to action or inaction, and myriad other dynamics. Moreover, he explains these topics in a manner that is easily accessible to the reader by presenting his arguments and discussions in a linear, straightforward manner, with good humor, and offers his ideas up with practical examples that make understanding these factors much more easily digestible.

Personally, I feel words are slowly losing their power, given the widespread use of emoticons, truncated phrases, and other lazy writing that we are all guilty of participating in since e-mail first began to flourish. Texting and spell-check, of course, have accellerated this process. It's quite shocking, even though I often think I'm quite jaded at this point, by the erroneous use of words, or mispellings, or simply the failure to use more robust words where lazier language is allowed to suffice. Sadly, I don't think this trend will reverse itself, making a book like this all the more important. Even in writing this review I find I'm rushing perhaps a bit too much in order to progress on to the next task, as we all are in our day-to-day lives.

I would definitely recommend this book for anyone interested in linguistics, communications, intelligence, and academia (writ large).
4620291
This book  has made such a strong  impact on my vocabulary.  A real tool for thinkers and word lovers alike.  Highly recommended.