Book review: Bryson's dictionary for writers and editors by Bill Bryson

Published on Thursday 4 June 2009 13:36

BRYSON'S DICTIONARY FOR WRITERS AND EDITORS BY BILL BRYSON (Black Swan, £8.99) * * *

I DEFY anybody not to pick this book up and thumb through it, and keep thumbing through it for a while.

It looks like a list of words and expressions. Well, that's exactly what it is. Running through it, though, is the salty intellect of Bill Bryson. This, like his other books, shows us the relationship between the world and a man who wants to define, with precision, the things in that world.

Aids is not a disease but "a medical condition". Bellwether comes from "wether", a castrated sheep with a bell around its neck who led the herd. Big Ben is not a clock, it's a bell. Do not confuse "poring" with "pouring". Pristine means unchanged, rather than spotless. A scale model of something is not a replica, because a replica must be the same size so the term "exact replica" is wrong. But split infinitives, it turns out, are not.