The Dord, the Diglot, and an Avocado or Two: The Hidden Lives and Strange Origins of Common and Not-So-Common Words [Paperback]

Anu Garg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 30, 2007

From the creator of the popular A.Word.A.Day e-mail newsletter

A collection of some of the most interesting stories and fascinating origins behind more than 300 words, names, and terms by the founder of WordSmith.org.

Did you know:
There’s a word for the pleasant smell that accompanies the first rain after a dry spell? Petrichor, combining petros (Greek for stone) and ichor (the fluid that flows in the veins of Greek gods).

An illeist is one who refers to oneself in the third person.

There’s a word for feigning lack of interest in something while actually desiring it: accismus.

For any aspiring deipnosophist (a good conversationalist at meals) or devoted Philomath (a lover of learning), this anthology of entertaining etymology is an ideal way to have fun while getting smarter.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Garg, logophilic founder of wordsmith.org and the 600,000-subscriber A.Word.A.Day email newsletter, jam-packs his latest good-natured, reader-friendly book (after Another Word A Day) with terms exotic and domestic, lessons in etymology and surprising tricks of the linguist trade, such as the fact that "as a copyright trap... encyclopedia publishers are known to add a fictitious biography or two to their works." Divided into several short chapters, each with a unique focus, Garg covers topics like the "language mint" successes ("Grok," "Scofflaw," "Teetotal"), words that come from fictional character names ("Prufrockian," "Throttlebottom," "Zelig"), food-speak ("Epicurean," "Julienne," "Postprandial") and units of measurement ("Dol," "Millihelen," "Miner's Inch"). "Lexperts," as Garg calls them, will enjoy testing themselves with 77 trivial pursuit-style questions, though readers may bemoan the lack of a comprehensive index. Otherwise, Garg's latest little gem will be enjoyed by anyone with a thing for words, language and history.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

ANU GARG is the founder of Wordsmith.org, an online community of word lovers from 200 countries, now in its thirteenth year. He is also the creator of the A.Word.A.Day e-mail newsletter with more than 600,000 subscribers, and the author of the books A Word A Day and Another Word A Day.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Plume (October 30, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452288614
• ISBN-13: 978-0452288614
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #667,268 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Anu Garg is the founder of Wordsmith.org, a community of more than half-million readers in some 200 countries. He grew up in rural India. He learned the English language as a second language and moved to the US to study computer science in graduate school. He worked as a software engineer at a number of corporations including AT&T Labs. Eventually he gave up his career in software for the love of words and founded Wordsmith.org to spread the magic of words.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

55 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful wonderful words !, October 30, 2007

By 

Jo Ana Starr "Mind-Body-Spirit" (USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Dord, the Diglot, and an Avocado or Two: The Hidden Lives and Strange Origins of Common and Not-So-Common Words (Paperback)

If you love language and cherish your own rich and interesting vocabulary, you've got to read this book ! It is full of fascinating, odd and wonderful words, that you may be able to work into a sentence or two, or maybe even a conversation.

In a world in which words are shrinking, and where text-messaging is creating a whole new vocabulary of non-words, this book is a breath of fresh air.

If you love words and their origins, you will love this book !

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Word Play, January 29, 2008

By 

Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 109,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Dord, the Diglot, and an Avocado or Two: The Hidden Lives and Strange Origins of Common and Not-So-Common Words (Paperback)

Most people rarely learn a new word after they pass their last vocabulary test in school. That's a shame. Words and their origins can be the source of a lot of fun. Anu Garg makes that point obvious in The Dord, the Diglot, and an Avocado or Two by providing clever word puzzles and word histories filled with fascinating details, humor, and irony. If you can't get enough after you read the book, subscribe to Garg's online weekly newsletter.

Let me give you two samples of the book:

1. "Orthographically speaking, what do the two countries Afghanistan and Tuvalu have in common?" (Hint: Look closely.)

2. "Dord: The word density had a short-lived synonym: dord . . . While the second edition of Webster's New International Dictionary was under way, an editor received an entry 'D or d,' which was defined as density, where the uppercase D and the lowercase d were abbreviations for the word density. The editor conflated the letters as dord and a new word was born."

The material is organized around themes into chapters with the quiz questions inserted to keep you awake. Entries are short so this is a good book to read when you just have a few minutes to spare. I read it while waiting for my car to be aligned, and the car guys were wondering what was so funny.

An on-going theme is the mobility of language as meanings grow, shift, and sometimes even become their polar opposites. I was particularly intrigued by the many mechanisms by which the real world turns into fiction and words and fiction creates new words with precise story-defined meanings.

Anu Garg has a sense of humor and a love of words that's contagious. This book would be a great gift for a youngster who is at that age where he or she would like to learn words that would puzzle others (the chapter on obscure insult words that people won't know are insulting would appeal to many a 13 year-old).

I actually was inspired by the many references to Dickens to want to read some of his books that I haven't read. Perhaps you will be, too.

The book also has an index that allows you to easily look up the word that intrigues you from its very appearance or sound (such as Throttlebottom perhaps).

Enjoy a Cook's tour of the English language while picking up amusing furphy during the nychthemeron it will take you to read this book!

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Just what you're looking for!, April 26, 2008

By 

Rebecca VanShoubrouek (Nacogdoches, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Dord, the Diglot, and an Avocado or Two: The Hidden Lives and Strange Origins of Common and Not-So-Common Words (Paperback)

If you're a word nerd or a language lover, this is the book for you. I was searching for a birthday present for a linguaphile friend of mine, and decided that this would be a pretty good purchase. Boy, was I wrong -- it was a great purchase! I found myself reading through the chapters, picking up all kinds of useful knowledge like the origin of the word "cappuccino" (it's pretty interesting, and I won't spoil it for you). Seriously, this is a fun and interesting book on word origins and I highly recommend it. I'm willing to bet that Garg's other books are also great, and I can't wait to check them out.