Norman W. Schur

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Norman W. Schur (1907–1992) was an American lawyer and lexicographer.

Life
Schur was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and attended Boston Latin School. He studied several languages, including Greek, French, German, Latin, and Italian, and graduated from Harvard University in 1927. After a year on fellowships in Italy and France, he returned to study at Harvard Law School before transferring to Columbia Law School. He practiced law in the United States and the United Kingdom for more than 50 years, then followed his lifelong passion for words by writing lexicons and other language books.

Selected works
- British Self-Taught: With Comments in American (1973)
- English English: A Descriptive Dictionary (1978)
- 1000 Most Important Words (1981)
- Practical English: 1000 Most Effective Words (1983)
- 1000 Most Practical Words (1983)
- 1000 Most Challenging Words (1988)
- 1000 Most Obscure Words (1990)
- British English A to Zed (1991)
- The Facts on File student’s thesaurus (1991)
- 2000 Most Challenging and Obscure Words (1994)
- British English A to Zed, revised (2001)

References
His obituary in The New York Times (June 4, 1992) noted his work as a lexicographer and lawyer. He is also mentioned in Harvard College’s 50th Anniversary Report (1977).