Putnam's Word Book
Tags
Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Students and professionals who need to improve the precision of their English writing
- Learners preparing for English exams who want to distinguish near-synonyms
- English teachers, who can use it as reference material for teaching word discrimination
- Dictionary enthusiasts interested in traditional English reference works
Not a good fit for
- Absolute beginners whose vocabulary is below the level of the discriminations discussed
- Users seeking the most current contemporary usage norms
- Casual readers who want continuous prose rather than a reference book
Reading tips
- No need to read it cover to cover; consult entries when you meet confusable words in writing or reading.
- Keep a notebook and organize the entries you consult by category.
- Stay alert to the book's judgments and compare them with contemporary dictionaries.
- Use the e-book's search function to read related entries around the same root.
About the publisher
Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.
Contents
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FAQ
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Comments
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About the author
Louis A. Flemming (1875– ) was an American lexicographer. Public information about his life and scholarly background is limited, and only one of his works is held in this collection, namely Putnam's Word Book. Judging from the approach of this reference work, he was concerned with the systematic organization and practical use of English vocabulary, aiming to provide readers with a word list convenient for consultation, word selection, and writing reference. Handbooks of this kind are practical dictionaries intended for general readers, emphasizing orderly arrangement and ease of lookup rather than theoretical discussion, and thus they served a utilitarian purpose in English learning and everyday writing of the period. Flemming's compiling work reflects one aspect of American practical dictionary publishing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: compilers often sought brevity and consultability, gathering scattered lexical knowledge into portable manuals. Because sources are limited, his specific career, other works, and the scope of his influence remain to be further verified.
