The Oxford Dictionary of Difficult Words

We all know what the words cat and dog and mother and tree mean. What we really need is a dictionary that helps us with the tough words, like elucubrate, or demesne, or cynosure. The Oxford Dictionary of Difficult Words is designed to meet this need. A portable reference, it features more than 10,000 entries that focus exclusively on words that, while outside most people's working vocabulary, are often encountered in literature, in technical writings (such as computing or medical terminology), and in such diverse subject areas as law, philosophy, and art.