Totally Weird And Wonderful Words

Do you know what a snollygoster is? Would you eat something called a muktuk? Do you know anyone who engages in onolatry? Impress your friends and pepper your dinner party conversations with such nuggets as gobemouche, mumpsimus, and cachinnate. You can learn about all of these bizarre and beautiful words and many more in Totally Weird and Wonderful Words. Both witty and entertaining, this new paperback brings together two best-selling compendiums to all words unique and strange, Weird and Wonderful Words and More Weird and Wonderful Words. Offering a potpourri of colorful and fascinating words compiled by noted lexicographer Erin McKean, it contains hundreds of definitions, and has been updated to include two new essays, with over 150 words new to this edition. Written in a clear and conversational style, the book contains full-page cartoon illustrations by Roz Chast and Danny Shanahan. Featuring hundreds of words guaranteed to amuse and astonish, this is a book that will appeal to logophiles everywhere. It also features a bibliography of Oxford dictionaries and a guide to creating your own unusual words correctly from Greek and Latin roots. Smart and funny and with just a touch of whimsy, Totally Weird and Wonderful Words is the perfect book for reading in your sitooterie with a bumbo in your hand while mavises sing in your ear.

Lists the meaning of hundreds of bizarre and unusual words and includes a guide to coining new words.

This title digs deep into forgotten corners of the dictionary, gathering both the most spectacular old and the most impressive new words. The result is more than 400 prime specimens with pronunciations, defined in a conversational style.

When her grandmother has a stroke, Dora returns to the small town where she grew up to take over her family's vintage clothing store -- and meets a handsome contractor. Is he interested in Dora? Or is he working from a different blueprint? Dora has always taken the path of least resistance. She went to the college that offered her a scholarship, majoring in "vagueness studies," and wears whatever shows the least dirt. She falls into a job at the college coffee shop and has a crush on her flirty boss, Gary. But just when she's about to test Gary's feelings, Mimi, the grandmother who raised her, suffers a stroke. Dora rushes back to Forsyth, NC, and finds herself running her grandmother's vintage clothing store while her grandmother recovers -- andmeets Mimi's adorable contractor, Conrad. The store has always been a fixture in Dora's life; though she grew up more of a jeans-and-sweatshirt kind of girl, before she even knew how to write, Mimi taught her that a vintage 1920s dress could lift a woman's spirit. But why has Mimi started writing down -- and giving away -- stories of the dresses in her shop? Amidst personal and professional turmoil, can Dora can trade her boring clothes for vintage glamour and her boring life for one she actually wants?

Successful word-coinages--those that stay in currency for a good long time--tend to conceal their beginnings. We take them at face value and rarely when and where they were first minted. Engaging, illuminating, and authoritative, Ralph Keyes's The Hidden History of Coined Words explores the etymological underworld of terms and expressions and uncovers plenty of hidden gems. He also finds some fascinating patterns, such as that successful neologisms are as likely to be created by chance as by design. A remarkable number of new words were coined whimsically, originally intended to troll or taunt. Knickers, for example, resulted from a hoax; big bang from an insult. Casual wisecracking produced software, crowdsource, and blog. More than a few resulted from happy accidents, such as typos, mistranslations, and mishearing (bigly and buttonhole), or from being taken entirely out of context (robotics). Neologizers (a Thomas Jefferson coinage) include not just scholars and writers but cartoonists, columnists, children's book authors. Wimp originated with a book series, as did goop, and nerd from a book by Dr. Seuss. Coinages are often contested, controversy swirling around such terms as gonzo, mojo, and booty call. Keyes considers all contenders, while also leading us through the fray between new word partisans, and those who resist them strenuously. He concludes with advice about how to make your own successful coinage. The Hidden History of Coined Words will appeal not just to word mavens but history buffs, trivia contesters, and anyone who loves the immersive power of language.

A study of English semantics during the Enlightenment. New words 1650–1800 reflect the new middle-class culture of sociability, commerce, and science. Old mostly obsolete words illuminate the realities of working-class life, exhausting labor, dirt, outrageous sexism, magic, horses, bizarre food.

There are many words relating to old age, aging, and the elderly, and this compendium of words seeks to help you understand almost two thousand of them. Most of these words are unusual, rare, obsolete, archaic, wonderful, marvelous, arcane, and even preposterous. All of them apply to the aged, a group that makes up an increasing portion of the populationparticularly in the United States, Europe, and Japan. Here are just a few of the interesting words youll learn: Cenotaph: a monument erected as a memorial to a dead person or dead people buried elsewhere, especially those killed fighting a war Lethonomia: a tendency to forget, or inability to recall, names Oligoria: disinterest in former friends or hobbies Listed alphabetically with pronunciation keys, the words are categorized under forty-eight headings. For example, in the end-of-life category, youll find the word feuillemorte, which is the wan, yellow color of death. Under retirement, youll find ecesis, which is the acclimatization to retirement, and Opagefaengris, a prison for retired male criminals in Singen, Germany. Boost your vocabulary, indulge in a love of language, and improve the way you communicate with seniors and medical professionals. It starts with learning ElderSpeak.

What is English? Can we be as certain as we usually are when we say something is not English? To find some answers Tim Machan explores the language's present and past, and looks ahead to its futures among the one and a half billion people who speak it. His search is fascinating and important, for definitions of English have influenced education and law in many countries and helped shape the identities of those who live in them. Finding an account that fits the constantly changing varieties of English is, Tim Machan finds, anything but simple. But he rises to the challenge, grappling with its elusive essence through episodes in its history. He looks at the ambitions of Caxton, the preoccupations of Johnson, and the eloquence of Churchill, tussles with the jargons of contemporary business, and pursues his object from rural America to James Cook's Australia. He examines creoles, pidgins, and dialects, and takes apart competing histories showing their assumptions and prejudices. Finally he reveals the stable category English, resting paradoxically within its constantly mutating forms and varieties. This is a book for everyone interested in English and the role of language in society and culture.