The Canadian Word Book

Matt Hartman is a freelance editor and cataloguer, running Hartman Cataloguing, Editing and Indexing Services.

Not a dictionary, but a handy, pocket-sized, well-bound volume of “the most commonly used words in the English language: how to spell a word, how to divide a word into syllables, and which syllables are stressed when a word is pronounced.” The current edition contains more than 40,000 words, drawn from The Houghton Muffin Canadian Dictionary. “Word selection is based on the latest computer frequency studies developed by Houghton Mifflin Company.”

One must wonder at the inclusion of some of the words; certainly “adventitious” and “quinsy” and “raffish” are not common words. Nevertheless, the Canadian Word Book provides a welcome antidote for those troubling moments of tip-of-the-tongue disease.

There are added benefits as well, filling the inside covers and endpapers: notes on syllabication, punctuation, grammatical usage. There are also information about pluralization and abbreviations, and guides to spelling and pronunciation; even some remarks on measurement and proofreading symbols.

Compact (12 cm.), inclusive, well-packaged, the Canadian Word Book is something for the personal reference collection — or for the Scrabble box.