I especially like this book because it sometimes includes the origin of the word.

Got this as a birthday gift from my dad's friend, Uncle Ted, on 01/15/1981...

"Dear Peter, Happy thirteenth! Best wishes for many, many more! You might employ this tome in garnering adroit articulation and erumpent erudition in composition to amaze your instructors! Enjoy! Ted"

My dad had interesting friends. ( )

Family Word Finder is a rich source of words - their meanings, their origins and their connections to other words. It is not just a dictionary, it is also a thesaurus, a phrase-builder and a spelling and pronunciation guide all in one. Within its 928 pages you will find:
- 10,500 key words
- More than 200,000 synonyms and antonyms
- Sample sentences to make work meanings clear
- Word origins to help you understand how the English language grew
- Up-to-date vocabulary, including slang and informal words
- Helpful usage notes so that you can avoid making common errors
- Pronunciation tips, spelled out phonetically rather than with symbols
- Spelling tips
- Exploring the Word features to make building your vocabulary fun
- Parts of speech identified
- Quotations - by great men and women who have used these words to make pithy or even humorous statements
- Technical words and foreign expressions, commonly used in English
- Cross references to related words

Excellent reference work in coordination with other books and programs which are on the computer