Another Word A Day: An All-New Romp through Some of the Most Unusual and Intriguing Words in English (Paperback)

by Anu Garg (Author) "A reader wrote, I know you've been featuring words every day at Wordsmith.org for more than a decade..." (more)
Key Phrases: verb intr, Middle English, Old French, Old English (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
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

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 an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (October 4, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471718459
• ISBN-13: 978-0471718451
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #366,142 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hilarious!, October 15, 2005

By	Eric Shackle (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Anu Garg, the world's favorite wordsmith, has just published his second book, called "Another Word A Day." It's the funniest book I've read this year - a laugh on every page. It includes dozens of amusing anecdotes and quips from some of the 600,000 wordlovers who receive his free newsletter A Word A Day. It would make an ideal Christmas present for readers of all ages.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enhancing Your Enjoyment of English, November 16, 2005

By	F. Hamilton "[e-mail]" (St. Louis, MO United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

_Another Word a Day: An All-New Romp through Some of the Most Intriguing Words in English_ is a linguaphile's delight! Written by Anu Garg, author of _A Word a Day_ (the newsletter and the book), _Another Word a Day_ "celebrates the English language in all its quirkiness, grandeur, fun, and delight."

Although the reader is likely to encounter some unfamiliar words in this collection (nyctalopia, dasypygal, and zugzwang, for example), all of the words are in use, and most are illustrated by examples from current sources.

_Another Word a Day_ is organized into 52 chapters, each with a theme (for a few chapters the reader is invited to discover the theme). Examples of chapters are "Words Formed Erroneously," "Words about Words," and "Numeric Terms." Each chapter includes five entry words, and each entry includes pronunciation, plural (if applicable), part of speech, definition, etymology, and use in context from a published source.

Nearly every chapter includes reader feedback, presumably collected from Garg's online community -- some 600,000 strong. For example, seventeen theories of the origin of the term "eighty-six" are presented, even though no one theory can be proven.

Several chapters offer puzzles or quizzes (answers are provided at the end of the book), and an index of entry words is helpful. Pithy quotations appear at the bottom of most pages -- a bit of lagniappe for the reader.

Sometimes a person with a fresh perspective can help us appreciate things around us that we take for granted. Such is the case with Anu Garg, who was born and raised in the state of Uttar Pradesh, in India, and did not begin to learn English until he was in the sixth grade. Garg's fascination with words and his mastery of English are apparent, however. With clarity and conciseness he leads us on mini-explorations of our language. The enthusiasm of this most worthy "tour guide" is contagious.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Provides nutriment in spades for those interested in words, May 18, 2006

By	loce_the_wizard "loce_the_wizard" (Lilburn, GA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

In "Another Word a Day" (is anyone else irritated that we cannot use italics for titles on reviews here?) Anu Garg devotes 52 specialized chapters to sets of five words each. He focuses on a common theme for each chapter, such as Numeric Terms, Fishy Words, or Words about Books and Writing (and having deployed the quotations for the book title, I must leave the chapter titles unadorned).

I received a copy of this book back in the winter and promptly lost it when it slid behind a rather ugsome desk I was in the process of tidying. Now that I have ousted the book, I am enjoying it. More to the point, I'm learning a great deal about a diverse, interesting collection of words. Mr. Garg succeeds in large measure by making the process entertaining. I suspect that the most ardent agelast would at least chuckle to himself at some point and that even erudite readers will run across words they had either forgotten about or hitherto not encountered.

Mr. Garg offers definitions parsed out by parts of speech, delves into a bit of etymology without lapsing into morbidly detailed fact-finding, and includes examples of how each word has been used in the current lexicon. He augments the text with an abundance of quotes and pithy sidebars.

In short, a book that provides nutriment in spades for those folks, myself included, who are interested in words and their usage and history.