Description

Do you know what a snollygoster is? Do you know anyone who engages in onolatry? Would you eat something called a muktuk? Impress your friends and pepper your dinner party conversations with such nuggets as gobemouche, mumpsimus, and cachinnate. Tie your tongue in knots trying to say such sesquipedalian words as floccinaucinihilipilification or pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. You can learn about all of these bizarre and beautiful words and many more in Weird and Wonderful Words.

Weird and Wonderful Words is a potpourri—a gallimaufry, a salmagundi—a collection of colorful and strange words. Compiled by noted lexicographer Erin McKean, the book contains hundreds of definitions written in a clear and conversational style. 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, 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, or something like that.

A sampling of Weird and Wonderful Words

Autochthon: a human being born from the soil where he or she lives (like the Biblical Adam). Also used as a synonym for aborigine, it comes from a Greek word meaning sprung from that land itself.

Camorra: a secret society, usually one breaking the law. This word comes from the name of group that was active in Naples in the nineteenth century.

Snollygoster: a dishonest politician, especially a shrewd or calculating one. A connection has been proposed between this word and snallygaster, a mythical monster of Maryland, invented to frighten freed slaves. However, the first evidence for snallygaster follows snollygoster by about a hundred years, making a connection (in this direction, at least) unlikely.

Tigon: the hybrid offspring of a male tiger and a lioness. A liger is the offspring produced by a male lion and a tigress.

Extended Copyright Information

Copyright 2003 by Oxford University Press, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Oxford University Press.

Previously published by Oxford University Press.

Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press.

Jacket illustration by Roz Chast.
Jacket design by Nora Wertz.

Related Links

For more weird and wonderful words visit Erin McKean's blog The Dictionary Evangelist.

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About the Author

Erin McKean is the Senior Editor for the Oxford University Press North American Dictionary Program and the editor of VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly.

Like this author? Check out the list of books by this author available on DailyLit.

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Opening Lines (Experimental)

What makes a word weird? It would be convenient to say that it’s as ineffable as whatever it is that makes art Art, but that’s not quite true. Words are weird because they have odd sounds, or an abundance of syllables, or a completely gratuitous k, j, q, z, or x. Words are often weird because ...

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Copyright

Copyright 2003 by Oxford University Press, Inc.

All Rights Reserved.

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