I was reading the other night and came across a new word,”nonpareil”.
Was reading Jon Krakauer’s book Where Men WIn Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman
Its a great and sad recount of Pat Tillman’s life and the terrible decisions that the Army made to cover up his death.(mostly the Bush administration’s PR efforts are at fault)
Anyway I can across this sentance:
“The air assault was bolstered by operations on the ground conducted by approximately seventy American Special Operations troops (some fifty of whom were Delta Force Operators, the nonpareil of the U.S. military),”
Nonpareil, a word I’ve never seem before and one that I found strange because Krakauer doesn’t use words to impress.
He doesn’t have to.
I looked it up and websters defines in this usage as “having no equal”.
Totally cool word and excellent use of it.
I’m still confused why it was used in this book. My guess is the author originally wrote something like “The most elite unit” or something like that and an editor found it too wordy and replaced it with nonpareil.
Anyway I realy like the word and hope to use it in the future……..
dodizzle 