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.
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"If you're tired of using only ordinary, everyday words, you might want to check out "Totally Weird and Wonderful Words." Editor Erin McKean's A-to-Z compendium of hundreds of out-of-the-ordinary words and their definitions will not only help you dress up your vocabulary, but might even turn heads at a cocktail party and raise eyebrows on the elevator."--The Associated Press
About the Author
Erin McKean is the Senior Editor for the Oxford University Press North American Dictionary Program and the Editor of Verbatim magazine.
Roz Chast is a staff cartoonist for The New Yorker and the author of more than five books of cartoons.
Danny Shanahan is a staff cartoonist for the New Yorker and illustrator of numerous books, including The Dead Sea Scroll Palindromes.
Product Details
Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (October 23, 2006)
Erin McKean is the founder of Wordnik.com. Previously, she was the editor in chief for American Dictionaries at Oxford University Press, and the editor of the New Oxford American Dictionary, 2E.
Her books include Weird and Wonderful Words, More Weird and Wonderful Words, Totally Weird and Wonderful Words, and That's Amore (which is also a collection of words). The Secret Lives of Dresses is her first novel, and really, her first book where the words are arranged in something other than alphabetical order.
Erin lives in California south of San Francisco and spends her free time reading, sewing, blogging, roller-skating, and arguing about whether robots or zombies would win in a fight (lasers optional). She loves loud prints, quiet people, long books with happy endings, and McVitie's Milk Chocolate Hobnobs.
Buyer beware: this is exactly the same book (except for title) as "Weird and Wonderful Words", which is listed here as being by Simon Winchester but in fact is also by Erin McKean. It's an enjoyable book, but you wouldn't want to buy it twice thinking you were getting a sequel.
========================================= CORRECTION: My apologies to the beleaguered author - a more careful re-examination of the introduction does indeed disclose that this is a combination of the two previous books, and I'm sure it does include the additional new words. When I first opened it up, all the entries I looked at were repeats, so I jumped to a hasty conclusion.
I do think, though, that online buyers need an advisory on this, as some others might otherwise make the same mistake I did, of thinking that this one is a third book "totally" different from the first two.
