One of my favourite books

is called The Superior Person's Book of Words by Peter Bowler (ISBN 0 7475 5337 8) which was first published (back home) in 1979 and subsequently in the US in 1985 and later again in the UK.

Mr Bowler's avowed first objective as set out in the Prologomena was to provide the ordinary man in the street with new and better verbal weapons.

The book should be compulsory reading for anyone who claims English as his or her first language.

I dug it out today after recalling a little plan I'd cooked up some time ago, which was to work my way through the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary compiling an alphabetic listing of opprobrious terminology and might be applied to the Fat Bastard in lieu of the that clapped out appellation.

Sadly I don't have a copy of the Shorter OED, but I do have a copy of 'The New Webster Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language' which must weigh at least half the SOED and which will have to act as substitute.

By curious coincidence it was to Websters that Mr Bowler turned in pursuit of words for inclusion and at least some indication of use and meaning.