Bryson's Dictionary For Writers And Editors (v5.0) by Bill Bryson Page A

honor.
    bumf. Assorted papers.
    Bumppo, Natty. Note
-pp-.
Hero of James Fenimore Cooper stories.
    Bunche, Ralph (Johnson). (1904-1971) American statesman; one of the founders of the United Nations. Awarded Nobel Peace Prize (1950).
    Bundesbank. Central bank of Germany.
    Bundesrat, Bundestag. The
Bundesrat
(Federal Council) is the upper house of the German parliament; the
Bundestag
(Federal Assembly) is the lower house.
    Bundesrepublik Deutschland. (Abbr. BRD.) Federal Republic of Germany.
    Bundeswehr. German armed forces.
    Bunsen burner. (One cap.)
    Buoniconti, Nick. (1940–) American football player.
    buoy is pronounced
boy,
not
boo-ee.
Think of buoyant.
    burgeon does not mean merely to expand or thrive. It means to bud or sprout, to come into being. For something to burgeon, it must be new. Thus, it would be correct to talk about the burgeoning talent of a precocious youth, but to write of “the ever-burgeoning population of Cairo” is wrong. Cairo’s population has been growing for centuries, and nothing, in any case, is ever-burgeoning.
    bürgermeister. (Ger.) Mayor.
    Burgess, (Frank) Gelett. (1866-1951) American humorist.
    Burgundy. Region of eastern France. In French, Bourgogne. The wine is burgundy (lowercase).
    Burke and Hare. Body snatchers and murderers in Edinburgh in the early nineteenth century; they were both named William.
    Burkina-Faso. Landlocked west African state, formerly Upper Volta; capital Ouagadougou. Natives are Burkinabe (sing. and pl.).
    Burma, Myanmar. The first is the former official name of the Southest Asian nation and the one now preferred by most publications and other informed users outside Burma.
Myanmar
was for a time used by many publications, but now its use is mostly confined to the country’s government and institutions under its influence. Some authorities write
Burma/Myanmar
. The United Nations uses just
Myanmar
.
    Burne-Jones, Sir Edward Coley. (1833-1898) British painter and designer.
    burnoose (or burnous ). A hooded Arab cloak.
    Burnt-Out Case, A. Novel by Graham Greene (1960).
    burnt sienna. Not
siena
.
    burqa. Type of enveloping dress worn by Muslim women when in public to preserve their modesty. Also spelled burkha, burka, burqua.
    Burtts Corner, New Brunswick, Canada.
    Burundi. African republic; capital Bujumbura.
    Buryatiya. Russian republic.
    Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, England. (No apos.)
Bury
is pronounced
berry
.
    bus, buses, bused, busing are words relating to a form of transportation and should not be confused with
buss, busses,
etc., meaning kiss(es).
    but used negatively after a pronoun presents a problem that has confounded careful users for generations. Do you say, “Everyone but him had arrived” or “Everyone but he had arrived”? The authorities themselves are divided.
    Some regard
but
as a preposition and put the pronoun in the accusative—i.e.,
me, her, him
, or
them
. So just as we say, “Give it to her” or “between you and me,” we should say, “Everyone but him had arrived.”
    Others argue that
but
is a conjunction and that the pronoun should be nominative (
I, she, he,
or
they
), as if the sentence was saying, “Everyone had arrived, but he had not.”
    The answer perhaps is to regard
but
sometimes as a conjunction and sometimes as a preposition. Two rough rules should help.
    1. If the pronoun appears at the end of the sentence, you can always use the accusative and be on firm ground. Thus, “Nobody knew but her” “Everyone had eaten but him.”
    2. When the pronoun appears earlier in the sentence, it is almost always better to put it in the nominative, as in “No one but he had seen it.” The one exception is when the pronoun is influenced by a preceding preposition, but such constructions are relatively rare and often clumsy. Two examples might be “Between no one but them was there any bitterness” and “To everyone but him life was a