The word lexicon designates a wordbook, but it also has a special abstract meaning among linguists, referring to the body of separable structural units of which the language is made up.
This is the rare wordbook that can actually spur ideas and conversation and the spontaneous telling of stories.
Small in format and chunky but with 172 pages of full-color illustrations, "Picture My Day," by Séverine Cordier and Cynthia Lacroix, differs in format from the usual oversize lap-friendly wordbook.
He published many important folk-song collections, notably "Songs of the Civil War" (1960), "The Great Atlantic and Pacific Song Book" (1965), "Songs of the Great American West" (1967) and, with Fred Silber, "Folksinger's Wordbook".
Nothing is quite so boring as reading a wordbook aloud to a toddler for the third or 13th time.
Between oohing and ahhing at the latest in theatrical magic effects, audiences at the 1713 premiere of Handel's Teseo would have followed the text, by lamplight, from a wordbook which directly translated the Italian recitatives - the conversational music in which the plot advances - while describing the gist of the arias.
James Conway's new production for English Touring Opera goes easy on the magic, and ditches today's surtitles in favour of a projection of this wordbook on to a television screen, line by quaint line.
It's best to collect words from your reading, and add them to a wordbook or a list on an app such as Memrise.
To be sure I had the letters right, I consulted the Urban Dictionary, an online wordbook to which users post definitions of slang.
An alternative, simpler iOS dictionary app is WordBook English Dictionary and Thesaurus, at $1.99.
