If you find yourself using the same words and phrases all the time, this book will help you expand your vocabulary. There are 145 core words. The entry for a core word typically takes up an entire page. The information, which is well-organised using boxes and colour, contains:
- synonyms
- related words (e.g. house -> castle)
- sayings, phrases related to the theme of the core word
- grammatical information
There is an Irish-English index, and an English-Irish index.
Here's a sample of how you might use it. The day I received it, I wanted to write "the postman brought me a new book" but I wasn't sure of the right word for brought in this situation. So...
- I looked up "I bring" in the English-Irish index. (The verb entries in the index are all in the form I verb.) The index itself is a mini-dictionary. It indicated that "I bring" = Tugaim or Beirim, and referred me to the headwords tugaim, faighim, bogaim, glacaim and iompraím. It also mentioned "I bring down" = leagaim and "I bring in the harvest" = tarlaím an fómhar. Already I had a lot of information.
- I then looked up Tugaim in the theasaurus portion. It conjugated the verb, and provided loads examples of usage, both of tug and of related words. One of the words I found was seachadaim = "I deliver", and that's the verb I chose. (Of course, I changed the tense and person.)
- Since the word seachadaim was new to me, I looked it up in a dictionary to ensure that I was using it correctly.
