From the Inside Flap
In 1994, then-graduate student Anu Garg created A Word A Day (AWAD), a Web site and free e-mail service that delivers a new word every day, complete with definition, etymology, sample usage, and commentary. Each week features a different theme—from "Greek Mythology" to "Words from Film"—and at the end of the week, Garg sends out a newsletter with enthusiastic feedback from the more than half-million AWAD subscribers around the world.
Inspired by his wildly popular Web site, Garg's first book, A Word A Day, became a national bestseller. Now, he presents a fitting encore: Another Word A Day is the second in a series of books in celebration of the English language, featuring words of all kinds—unusual, unfamiliar, intriguing, exotic—that are in use today. Garg offers fifty-two delightful chapters grouped by theme, ranging from "Words to Describe People," "Toponyms," and "Words Borrowed from Yiddish" to "False Friends," "Words That Aren't What They Appear to Be," and much more.
Inside you'll discover an all-new treasure trove of 260 curious and compelling words, including:
- assoil (uh-SOIL): verb tr. 1. To pardon. 2. To atone for.
- cumshaw (KUM-shaw): noun. A gift or a tip.
- lanate (LAY-nayt): adjective. Having a woolly surface.
- sennight (SEN-yt): noun. A week.
- ugsome (UG-suhm): adjective. Dreadful, loathsome.
- yegg (yeg): noun. A thug or a burglar, especially a safecracker.
Garg includes usage examples taken from current newspapers and magazines, as well as puzzles, quizzes, and real-life anecdotes interspersed throughout the entries for an extra dash of fun and fascination. For A Word A Day subscribers and word lovers everywhere, Another Word A Day is a beguiling tour through the English language that can't be found anywhere else.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From the Back Cover
A smorgasbord of surprising, obscure, and exotic words
In this delightful encore to the national bestseller A Word A Day, Anu Garg, the founder of the wildly popular A Word A Day Web site (wordsmith.org), presents an all-new collection of unusual, intriguing words and real-life anecdotes that will thrill writers, scholars, and word buffs everywhere. Another Word A Day celebrates the English language in all its quirkiness, grandeur, and fun, and features new chapters ranging from "Words Formed Erroneously" and "Red-Herring Words" to "Kangaroo Words," "Discover the Theme," and "What Does That Company Name Mean?" In them, you'll find a treasure trove of curious and compelling words, including agelast, dragoman, mittimus, nyctalopia, quacksalver, scission, tattersall, and zugzwang. Each entry includes a concise definition, etymology, and usage example, interspersed with illuminating quotations.
Praise for a word a day
"Anu Garg's many readers await their A Word A Day rations hungrily. Now at last here's a feast for them and other verbivores. Eat up!"
—Barbara Wallraff, Senior Editor at The Atlantic Monthly and author of Word Court
"AWADies will be familiar with Anu Garg's refreshing approach to words: words are fun and they have fascinating histories."
—John Simpson, Chief Editor, Oxford English Dictionary
