Indubitably, it’s an edification*

Want to be a clever clogs? Then a new book of long, smart-Alec words written by a Shropshire lad should make you the life and soul of any dinner party.

Or, on the other hand, make you appear a smarmy slimeball who should be avoided like a nasty case of halitosis - the latter being one of the favourite words in the lexicon of Andy Hughes, the author of The Little Book of Big Words and How to Use Them.

Self-confessed word collector Andy, a former student of Priory Grammar School in Shrewsbury, has been known to eavesdrop on other people’s conversations then jot down the all the big, clever words that sound impressive but which he hasn’t the foggiest about what they mean.

Indeed, there is probably a little-big word for such a person - like an Andy-er.

He says: “I just figured that I had started out as a writer and journalist, I was surrounded by really clever people and my vocabulary was not what it should have been, and I kept making notes of what people were saying.

“I’ve still got the original notes and that’s what made it into the book.”

Of course, it would be difficult not to poke fun at those people who use big words for the sole sake of using big words and appearing to be cleverer than they really are.

Everyone knows such a person and Andy, 37, takes great joy by including in his book the word for what such a creature does.

And that word is ‘obfuscate’. Try dropping that one into the conversation after a few beers down the pub.

Andy, whose real name is Kieran but in a typical word-swapping exercise changed his moniker to be easier on the ear, says: “This word [obfuscate] is so relevant to this book it’s amazing. It relates to the smarmy people who use long words to try to confuse you.

“The whole point of this book is to learn those very words so that you don’t look ignorant, or so that you yourself can in fact throw them into a conversation or correspondence to prove that you are indeed as intelligent as they.”

Words are weapons, especially the long clever ones, and Andy has been targeting them in certain directions of late with surprising results.

“I’ve made complaints to companies and used some of the words from the book,” he says. “I complained to a car company and I used the word ‘Brobdingnagian’ and thought ‘you’re never going to know what that means’.”

And the reaction he got from the car company? “Nothing,” he laughs, “but I bet they looked it up afterwards. “I just see words as weapons. If you want to complain about something it’s like ‘don’t mess with me, I’m actually quite clever’.”

Coincidentally, one of his favourite words from his book, ‘dullard’, means the opposite.

“I like it because it rolls off the tongue and I find it easy to remember because it’s not a long word,” he says.

One word that doesn’t trip off the tongue but tends to stumble from of the mouth like a piano falling down a flight of stairs, is ‘triskaidekaphobia’, which means a morbid fear of the number 13.

Useful to know for pub quizzes, says Andy, and useful at work every Friday the 13th when there will inevitably be a conversation about not walking under ladders and you can helpfully chip in with: “There’s a word for people like you.”

Andy insists that The Little Book of Big Words is not a dictionary. It is more of a manual, in that as well as offering definitions for words it also suggests ways of putting them into practice.

Take the word ‘obsequious’. It’s a useful word when wishing to describe someone who is smarmy, submissive, flattering and creepy towards others.

You can, according to the book, say: “I hate working with George - he’s so obsequious.”

As Andy points out, we’ve all worked with a George and now you’ve got a better way to describe him!

One drawback of using such words in writing rather in conversation is that even the computer spellcheck facility begins to resent you.

One word, not included in the book, but which rankles with Andy is the pronunciation of the name of the county town, Shrewsbury, where he grew up and where he appeared in the filming of A Christmas Carol in 1983.

“People pronounce it ‘Shruws-bury’; I say ‘Shrows-bury’. That’s how you should say it,” he insists.

Of course, The Little Book of Big Words is all good fun and Andy admits that it would make an ideal “toilet book” because readers can delve in, arm themselves with a new word and almost immediately launch it in our increasingly dumbed-down conversations.

It means that in the presence of an irritating little clever-clogs who knows the technical word for the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth (’arachibutyrophobia’ apparently), you can fight back.

Try saying the following to smart Alecs everywhere: “I’m sorry, but I suffer from hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia.”

That should do the trick. It will send them scurrying to the nearest dictionary . . . where they will discover that you have a terrible fear of long words.

*The Little Book of Big Words, RRP £9.99, published by Spring Hill (ISBN: 1-905862-03-2), is now on sale from most book stores, and at Tesco.