30 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary

by Norman Lewis

In just 30 days you will learn--
How to make words your slaves How to add words to your vocabulary while you are at the movies, listening to the radio, or reading How to find the words to sell your ideas How to use words to impress others without being a show-off How to find the right words to say exactly what you mean How to avoid the embarrassment of misusing or mispronouncing words How to become a lively conversationalist How to increase your language power quickly with some simple "roots" How to check on your progress daily with 30 challenging tests Plus--complete Index to New Words and Pronunciation Key

Genres: Nonfiction, Writing, Language, Reference, Self Help, Education, Words

Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1942

Reviews

[Mohit · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall, the book is one of the better ones. It is not soporific, and if words are your bete noire then its the book to help you make them your forte. Its certainly not for plebians and dilettante. The greatest message inculcated in the book is that to use words adroitly you need not belong to an esoteric circle.

[Briana Ford · Rating 2 out of 5]

Outdated. Published in 91. Best part is the index. Take a look at the words in the index, check off the ones you know, look the ones you don't know up in the thesaurus. Ta-da, a more powerful vocabulary.

[Serge Pierro · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent method for expanding your vocabulary. Each chapter is on a specific topic, and a list of relevant words is presented (with definitions). Then multiple tests are given to help you in the memorization process.

[Brit Cheung · Rating 4 out of 5]

I need to confess 30 days to build a "powerful" vocabulary was beyond what I am capable of--It virtually took me more than two months to “breeze through” the book, in part because I procrastinated a lot.
In the very beginning, there exists a vocabulary capacity test for self assessment but so many words eluded me or frankly, I never seen them before. A few of them are exceedingly odd and abstruse and compelled me to scramble for dictionary frequently.

Completely knowing procrastination is no good an approach, I still fall victim to it, severely！The book said the hit-and-miss method is not right,which I quite clearly understand. The fact was I am the hit-and-run type in building new words.Sorry, author.

One of the merits of the book is that it was compiled orderly, putting those identical words in a same chapter each containing no more than 20 new words, quite a reasonble amount.And I deliberately ignored some chapters …

Maybe next time when reading and encountering a word from the book, I still need to turn to the dictionary after racking brains without any clues,but the process of reading is of a lot fun--at least I got an indelible impression on one word:clandestine.

I would very much steal a kiss from someone clandestinely and vapored instantly. poof… bad idea.

[Jeff Koeppen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found the 1974 edition of this book on my uncle’s old book shelf. I’ve been doing basically the same job for fifteen years and figured my non-professional vocabulary had stalled out so I though it wouldn’t hurt to learn some new words. It turns out I knew most of the words in this book already, and some of the words I learned I probably will never have a use for - weltschmerz, vainglorious, uxorious, somnambulism – to name a few. Weltschmerz? Wow, my Word program doesn’t even recognize this one. It may have been booted out of the dictionary to make room for disco, space shuttle, or Internet. There was also a chapter entitled “French Phrases You Can Use”.

This book was REALLY dated. It felt more like it was written in the 1960s to me. It would be interesting to read a more current version of this to see how the authors changed it to correspond to our shiny, modern, utopian world.

[Katherine Anderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

An old book: 1942. Funny how a lot of these words are not used, or are so commonly used they were not new. One very interesting note in the penultimate chapter though was how our language really has changed so much. Just a mere 300 years ago King George told Sir Christopher Wren that his architecture of St. Paul's Cathedral was "amusing, awful, and artificial." Indeed a compliment when it really meant amazing, awe-inspiring, and artistic! I love language!

[Monica · Rating 4 out of 5]

After going through this book I kept seeing those vocab words pop up everywhere. Before I would have had no idea what those meant.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

I completed this book on a vacation. It was fun and interesting and a learned a lot of new words. I have been meaning to go through it again, but I think I'll not do it so fast this time and only do the 30 minutes a day.

[John Sorensen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book with good qualities, simple to read, fun exercises but many of the words are obviously outdated and I have never encountered before. A book like this would be more beneficial if it had been written within the last 20 years.

[Jo Layton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a complete word nerd- so I adored this book.

[Debabrata Tripathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

not interesting as like "word power made easy"

[Santosh · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you haven't read yet "Word Power Made Easy" - by Norman Lewis, then I will suggest you to read that first. It has better coverage, and friendly tone to teach the concepts used in this book.

I picked up this, as Norman Lewis is coauthor on this as well as this too is one of the popular book on vocabulary buiilding.

One good thing about this book, is each lesson is small, authors suggest just 15 min/day, though it took me little more. But I completed the book in flat 9 days. Off-course I was spending more than 15 min/day on this.

Book claims to have around 500 words, but the index has list of 408 words. After completion, I could recollect many words and many I have already learned as a part of "Word Power Made Easy". And for the words that I am not able to recollect easily - I added in a list for further practicing at "https://www.vocabulary.com/lists/7849290" - "30Days2Vocab".

Overall nice book to read on the go, on commute or just before sleep to cover lot of ground about vocabulary.

All the best.

[Grace Murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a good book. I learned some interesting words, but it was very outdated, which would make it hard to use many of them in everyday life. The exercises were also somewhat repetitive, and I think that some were inadequate to teach the words properly. Though many of the words are used today and are very common, there wasn't really an in-between: either the words were so old they wouldn't be useable in everyday life, or you used/heard them multiple times a day.

[Deepak Jaisinghani · Rating 3 out of 5]

It feels astronomically outdated reading it in 2020. The language has evolved by a thousandfold after the book was written. YouTube would serve as a more relevant contemporary teacher. But still, apart from an occasional new word here and there, it served as a useful prompt for a much-needed brush-up.

[Brook Gale · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a thoroughly enjoyable book. Each chapter provides insights into the English language. There are periodic tests to see what you've learned with a finial quiz at the end so you can see how much you've improved since your start on the journey. This is a workbook but I would recommend writing your daily lessons on a piece of paper so you can go back through again. Great book, I will read it again to reinforce what I've learned.

[Masroor Dahri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome book

[Maninder Singh · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's good book for intermediate learners. New learners first learn basics because in it not have start to zero. Its just vocabulary so it's for who already knows some English.

[Aj · Rating 3 out of 5]

me talk pretty one day wait wrong author

[Miriam Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had a great time despite the all the misogynistic examples. And I learnt words! I love words.

[Kevin Demel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just a book full of vocabulary terms and they don't do a very good job of creating a link between all the terms.

[Jim]

words I want to know better not necessarily from this book . Adding them as I see them.

Logaria
Touchstone

[anna · Rating 1 out of 5]

i have never been so happy to finish a book and i am never reading this again. my vocabulary is not that much better either ughhhh

[Amit Rao · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best vocabulary book for English for a beginner that will not overwhelm like other extensive vocabulary books, but to give a crisp and solid start to your unending pursuit to master the language.
🙌🏼

[Sama · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is absolutely great! I recommend this for anyone interested in learning more useful vocabulary in English. The way it’s designed is so remarkable. You’ll notice a huge difference in your linguistics ability. It can be summarized as follows, there’s a general vocabulary test at the very beginning of the book that determines your vocabulary level, based on that you’ll start to read a chapter a day and you’ll enjoy the detailed explanation of every single word. Hope y’all enjoy reading it !

[Lisa Kucharski · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have the 1942 print of this book. So, some of the language being used has shifted and changed when read by someone of 2011.

Great book to get engaged in language and learning not just new words but the source of words. The only little chapter which talked about current words whose meanings were different years ago was a great example of how language lives and changes.

Would highly recommend this to anyone interested in increasing vocabulary.

[Nex Juice · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book because I enjoy learning new words and discovering their meanings and origins. I picked up quite a few new words from this book, the only reason I didn’t give it 5 stars (I gave it 4) is because it is a bit outdated. Some of the words are rarely used or needed.

Some of my favorites were nebulous, qui vive & ubiquitous.

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

My honors english teacher in high school (sophomore year?) used this as a text book and I still find myself cracking it open every now and then. My husband and use it to quiz each other just for fun! I know, we're weird.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had to read this book in high school and thought I should revisit it. It was good...not any amazing technique for getting you to learn words. Just repetition, learn new words every day. Some of the words I will probably never say again in my life (ochlocracy?) but who knows.

[Denise Lopez · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Where I learned the meaning and use of words such as sycophant and osequious. Unfortunately, they're still not part of my everyday lingo."

[Lorelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Woohoo. A book for geeks like me who enjoy spending time learning big words. (Which I rarely use in normal conversation, mind you. I have to dumb down my word choice for some of my friends...)