A Dictionary of Modern English Usage

In essentials, Fowler's Modern English Usage can never be out of date, for his primary concern was to teach clear thinking and the orderly use of precise words, and to castigate whatever is slovenly, pretentious, or pedantic. But the conventions of grammar and vocabulary that he called 'usage' never stand still, and it is now thirty-nine years since he wrote. Constructions condemned as offensive or improper have forced their way into idiom; 'slipshod extensions' have won a respected place in our vocabulary; 'vogue words' have fallen out of fashion and others have taken their places; 'popularized technicalities' have proliferated.