Review: "Pelted with an interminable torrent of words"
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 02 22, 2012
Was trying to post the full title toFifteen Thousand Useful Phraseshere, but was informed of the following by Amazon: 'Oops! There are a few limits when you are putting product links in your review - you can't have more than 256 characters in a product title.' That being corrected, with the improbably long title of "Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases: A Practical Handbook Of Pertinent Expressions, Striking Similes, Literary, Commercial, Conversational, And Oratorical Terms, For The Embellishment Of Speech And Literature, And The Improvement Of The Vocabulary Of Those Persons Who Read, Write, And Speak English," this literary compendium by the late Greenville Kleiser is memorable, and not just for its long title.Greenville Kleiser (1868-1935) was the writer behind of a long list of motivating books and guides to oratorical success and personal development, some of which are still available.  He also worked as an instructor in Public Speaking at Yale University.  Originally published in 1917 by the Funk & Wagnalls Company of encyclopedia fame, this work is surprising in its depth, not just for its forty-word and 295-character title, including spaces.It should be noted that on the downside, there is no Table of Contents, at least in this particular free Kindle version. This Kindle edition,Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases, is said to have a table of contents so that you don't have to constantly press on the Kindle's 'Next Page' button on my Kindle to navigate to the section you want. It will cost you a buck, maybe more, but that's why we have choices between free or paid.After getting past a rather random preface of sorts, we find what's called a PLAN OF CLASSIFICATION, followed by a listing of the eleven sections.  There's an interesting introduction by Frank H. Vizetelly, a lexicographer, etymologist and editor who was employed by publishers Funk & Wagnalls to act as an editor for the firm's dictionaries and encyclopedia. He was also the author ofA Desk Book Of Idioms And Idiomatic Phrases In English Speech And Literature.Author Kleiser follows with a preface entitled How To Use This Book, followed by a Plan Of Study which outlines the eleven sections that we will see below, with some examples of some of the more interesting phrases encountered among the 15,000 offered in this work.  I can only list a few of the more interesting, out of the ordinary or witty ones encountered, and have done this by the sections in which they were found in this book.  Some of these may appear as being misspelled, but they were transcribed here as the author himself wrote them, including his explanatory notes which have been left in their original brackets.SECTION I: Useful PhrasesA: "abandoned hope", "amatory effusions [amatory = expressive of sexual love]"C: "conjugal felicity"D: "damask cheek [damask = rich patterned fabric; wavy pattern on Damascus steel]"E: "effulgent daybeams [effulgent = radiating light]"S: "sesquipedalian words [sesquipedalian = long]"SECTION II: Significant PhrasesA: "abashed and ashamed", "abstinence and self-denial"B: "babel and confusion", "bigots and blockheads"G: "galling and humiliating", "glib and loquacious [loquacious = very talkative]"SECTION III: Felicitous PhrasesA: "abstruse, metaphysical, and idealistic"E: "effluent, radiating, and fructifying [fructifying = Make fruitful or productive]", "egotistic, disdainful, and proud"J: "jealousy, exclusiveness, and taciturnity [taciturnity = habitually untalkative]"O: "obstinacy, stupidity, and willfulness", "officious, fidgety, and talkative"W: "waddling, perspiring, and breathless"SECTION IV: Impressive PhrasesA: "able, skilful, thorough, and genuine"C: "captious, petulant, peevish, and splenetic [captious = point out trivial faults]"F: "fanatic, enthusiast, visionary, and zealot", "fancy, humor, vagary, and caprice [vagary = extravagant or erratic notion or action]", "fop, coxcomb, puppy, and jackanapes [jackanapes = conceited person]"O: "obdurate, unfeeling, callous, and obstinate"Q: "quack, imposture, charlatan, and mountebank [mountebank = flamboyant charlatan]"S: "scandalize, vilify, traduce, and offend [traduce = humiliate with false statements]"SECTION V: Prepositional PhrasesPreposition "of"...B: "babel of tongues"H: "harbor of refuge", "harvest of regrets"J: "jangle of sounds", "jargon of philosophy"S: "savoring of quackery", "sting of satire"Preposition "by"...B: "ballasted by brains"Preposition "in"...B: "barren in intellect"W: "wallow in idolatry"Preposition "into"...B: "bullied into silence"K: "kindle into action"L: "lapse into pedantry [pedantries = attention to detail or rules]"Preposition "to"...F: "fly to platitudes", "foredoomed to failure"R: "reduced to impotence", "repeat to satiety", "run to seed"Preposition "with"...C: "cling with tenacity", "clothe with authority", "covered with ignominy"K: "kindle with enthusiasm"S: "seething with sedition [sedition = conduct or language inciting rebellion]"SECTION VI: Business PhrasesF: "Frankly, we believe it is extremely worth while for you"I: "I am confident that you will be thoroughly satisfied", "I am giving the matter my personal attention"Y: "You are certainly justified in complaining"V: "vehicle of intercourse", "vicissitudes of life [vicissitudes = sudden or unexpected changes]"SECTION VII: Literary ExpressionsA: "A broad, complacent, admiring imbecility breathed from his nose and lips"B: "Beaming with pleasurable anticipation"C: "Cold gaze of curiosity"F: "Familiar and endearing intimacy", "Felicitousness in the choice and exquisiteness in the collocation of words"H: "Half choked by a rising paroxysm of rage"J: "Jealousies and animosities which pricked their sluggish blood to tingling"R: "Ransack the vocabulary"S: "Sacrificed to a futile sort of treadmill", "She felt herself carried off her feet by the rush of incoherent impressions"SECTION VIII: Striking SimilesA: "A blind rage like a fire swept over him", "A book that rends and tears like a broken saw", "A breath of melancholy made itself felt like a chill and sudden gust from some unknown sea"B: "Beauty maddens the soul like wine", "Beheld great Babel, wrathful, beautiful, burn like a blood-red cloud upon the plain"Q: "Quaking and quivering like a short-haired puppy after a ducking"SECTION IX: Conversational PhrasesA: "A most extraordinary idea!", "A thousand hopes for your success", "All that is conjecture", "An unfortunate comparison, don't you think?"E: "Either way is perplexing", "Eminently proper, I think", "Excuse my bluntness"H: "Happily there are exceptions to every rule", "Have I incurred your displeasure?" "Have you any rooted objection to it?"M: "Many thanks--how kind and good you are!", "May I ask to whom you allude?", "May I venture to ask what inference you would draw from that?"R: "Rather loquacious, I think [loquacious = very talkative]"V: "Very well, I will consent", "Vivacity is her greatest charm"SECTION X: Public Speaking PhrasesA: "A fact of vast moment", "A few words will suffice to answer", "And now I have completed my review"I: "I adduce these facts [adduce = cite as an example]", "I view that prospect with the greatest misgiving", "It is an egregious mistake [egregious = conspicuously and outrageously reprehensible]"L: "Language is inadequate to voice my appreciation"SECTION XI: Miscellaneous PhrasesA: "A bewildering labyrinth of facts", "A piece of grotesque stupidity", "A pleasant flow of appropriate language"B: "Bandied to and fro", "Based on a fundamental error", "Beguile the tedium of the journey", "Bemoaning and bewailing his sad fortune", "Beset with external dangers", "Betrayed into deplorable error"K: "Keen power of calculation and unhesitating audacity", "Kindle the flames of genuine oratory"P: "Pregnant with a lesson of the deepest import"T: "The hurly-burly of events"Z: "Zealous in the cause he affected to serve"Greenville Kleiser authored many other titles, such asSuccessful Methods of Public Speaking,The Training of a Public Speaker,Model Speeches for Practiseand more.  I've only listed the freebies here, but if you do a search on the author's name, many others will appear.According to a recent article in Wikipedia, the "average persons' active vocabulary consists of 10,000 words, regardless of native tongue."  This is interesting because it represents a meager fraction of the lexis of that language in that according to theNew Oxford American Dictionary, there are more than 350,000 words, phrases, and senses, though other sources place this as closer to roughly 600,000 words.  These discrepancies are partly due to relative simplicity of spoken language to written language.  Additionally, one may understand more words than one uses, meaning that one's working vocabulary may not be representative of one's total knowledge of a language.A 1987 research on native English speaking university graduates found an average vocabulary size of 17,200 base words.  With the numbing down of television, one might wonder if that's still true.For those who are adventurous, the text-to-speech feature in this book is enabled.  Check your documentation for your particular model, but if you have a Kindle 2 you can start text to speech in the Text menu while you are reading. Hold down the 'Shift' key and press the 'SYM' key to stop or play.  Some of the results are quite comical, as you may find.I'll call this a 5-star read if just for its vast content of phrases, but only a 2-star book because of the lack of an active Table of Contents.  Still, in recognition of the late author's fascinating work here, I'll raise it to a 4-star offering, and if Greenville Kleiser were alive today, it would be a 5-star read due to his meticulous nature in editing.To quote the author: "And now I have completed my review"... hope that it was helpful.2/2/2012