The Describer's Dictionary »

David Grambs lives in New York City.

Have you ever found yourself grasping in vain for that ideal descriptive word lost somewhere within the misty recesses of your vocabulary? Or felt frustrated that an oddly shaped structure or pretty setting you wished to portray in writing didn't quite translate clearly to paper?

Library Journal

Having previously assisted wordsmiths with his Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers ( LJ 11/1/90), Grambs now focuses his attention on precision of description. His new work boasts more than 5000 entries not found in most thesauruses or dictionaries, the majority of them visually descriptive of the physical world and highly adjectival in form. Using reverse dictionary format, Grambs provides access by definitional phrases within the broad categories of ``things,'' ``earth and sky,'' ``animals,'' and ``people.'' Subdivisions (e.g., ``heads,'' ``eyes,'' ``jaws,'' etc.) simplify the reader's search for the perfect word, but one can still spend ample time thumbing through such delights as the approximately 100 entries under ``patterns and edges.'' Some suggested adjectives are questionable, such as vaccine for cow-like. Most verso pages contain examples of descriptive passages by well-known writers that are almost more helpful than the definitions themselves. Recommended for general collections.-- Cathy Sabol, Northern Virginia Community Coll., Manassas