'Words are not only tools; they are also weapons.' Peter Bowler's guides, as his thousands of fans worldwide already know, are witty, charming, and clever volumes that introduce weird and wonderful words. Now the three volumes are published in a collected edition for the first time to provide words to help you wriggle out of sticky debates, deal with obnoxious dinner guests and fill in sick leave application forms with panache. A picturesque panoply of words of which neither you nor anyone else has ever heard, Bowler provides not only an expanded range of words themselves, but also a genuine sense how to employ them to devastating effect. The Completely Superior Person's Book of Words is an arsenal of over a thousand sonifacient verbal weapons with which to verbigerate your friends and gorgonise your enemies.

This book will teach you the practical riches of saying it well with good words, neglected words, precise words for vocabular exaltation.

What Bowler manages to do in this omnium gatherum of over 1,000 words that all of us have (very) occasionally heard but have no idea how to use, is not only to provide their definitions (easy enough) but also to offer, for the first time, practical advice on how to use these words in real-life situations"€"to confound your friends, irritate your enemies, and impress your superiors. Thus the reader will not only learn the meaning of aprosexia, but also how best to use it when filling out their sick leave application form. Sample sentences, in comprehensible and often hilarious prose, are given for every word providing a verbal arsenal potent enough to "confuse, deter, embarrass, humiliate, puzzle, deceive, disconcert, alarm, insult (and occasionally compliment) everyone" with relative impunity. Learn only a hundred or so of these and confirm the author's ambition to give you, his readers, "a more finely tuned engine of the language they speak, so they more readily assert their linguistic superiority over their fellow travelers at the traffic stops of life." And there's still more: anecdotes of eccentric scholars, unbelievable tales of the cupidity and stupidity of the rich and famous, examples of idiot conceits and further curiosities of the so-called intellectual life. Now, all of this in one elegant softcover volume, with flaps, an unbelievable bargain at $24.95.

'Words are not only tools; they are also weapons' The secret to being a truly Superior Person is to use really superior words. More impressive than a top hat, much more effective than a fist-fight, here are five hundred words to help you wiggle out of sticky debates, deal with obnoxious dinner guests and fill in sick leave application forms with panache. Impress your friends, amaze your colleagues and baffle your enemies with this witty, charming, and clever little book.

The anxiously awaited third volume is here: a picturesque panoply of words of which neither you nor anyone else has ever heard. Bowler provides you not only with an expanded arsenal of words themselves, but also a genuine sense of the words and how to toss them off to devastating effect. Yes, friends, it is all here: over five hundred sonifacient words that will equip you with new, improved verbal weapons with which to verbigerate your friends and gorgonise your enemies.

The Superior Person's Book of Words (over 100,000 hardcover copies in print). In the words of the author, The format and the objectives are the same as before. I wish to equip the person in the street with new and better verbal weapons. Features 600 words. 15 line illustrations.