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Hello listeners. Welcome back to my podcast for learners of English all around the world.

How are you doing today? I hope you're doing fine. So I've got a really interesting episode lined up for you today.

I think you're going to enjoy it and you should find it very useful. Let me tell you about it.

So it's a conversation episode with a guest. My guest this time is Eli Bernstein. He is a writer

from Canada. Eli has written various short pieces for a number of different noteworthy publications,

including the New Yorker. But Eli has written his first book. It's available now from profile

books. And yes, let me tell you about it. So the book is called the dictionary. No, not the

dictionary. It's called dictionary of fine distinctions. Dictionary of fine distinctions. It's a very

useful and enjoyable book which aims to bring clarity to English vocabulary in a very entertaining way.

So the book focuses on nuances and subtle shades of meaning between pairs of words that seem very similar but are in fact quite different. Okay, that's what those fine

distinctions are. So a fine distinction is a very slight or subtle difference, okay? Of course,

as a learner of English, you must have noticed how English has a very wide vocabulary,

including plenty of words which are very close in meaning, right?

Various synonyms.

And this makes it pretty tricky to be sure that you're always using the right word for the right thing.

Okay.

For example, I mean, here are some of the words that we talk about in this conversation. So we talk about, for

example, poison and venom, which could be a very important distinction to make. Poisonous versus

venomous could be very important. What else? Envy versus jealousy. For example, if I hear my friend

Paul speaking perfect French and I feel that

...