文档介绍：A
DICTIONARYOF
CONTEMPORARY
by BERGEN EVANS
and EVANS
RANDOM HOUSE l NEW YORK
Fourteenth Printing
***@Copyright, 1957, by Bergen Evans and Cornelia Evans
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American
Copyright Conventions
Published in New York by Random House, Inc., and
simultaneously in Toronto, Canada by Random House
of Canada Limited.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 57-5379
Manufactured in the United States of America
PREFACE
When we speak or write we want to be interested in “book learning.” They are not
understood and respected. We want to con- used by educated people and hence are
vey our meaning and we want to do it in a regarded as “incorrect” and serve as the
way that mand admiration. To mark of a class. There is nothing wrong
plish these ends we must know the about using them, but in a country such as
meanings of words, their specific meanings ours where for a generation almost every-
and their connotations, implications and body has had at least a high school educa-
overtones, and we must know how - tion or its equivalent few people are willing
bine words effectively into sentences. to use expressions that are not generally
A dictionary can help us to understand approved as “correct.”
the meaning of a word. But the only way A man usually thinks about his work in
to understand a word fully is to see it in the language that his co-workers use. Turns
use in as many contexts as possible. This of speech that may have been natural to a
means that anyone who wants to improve statistician when he was a boy on a farm
his vocabulary must read a great deal and simply do e to his mind when he is
must make sure that he understands what talking about statistics. Anybody whose
he reads. There is no short cut to this kind work requires intellectual training-and
of knowledge. If a man thinks that noisome this includes everybody whose work in-
and noisy are synonyms, if he uses focus volves any amount o