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Monday 2 May 2011

Totally Weird and Wonderful Words!

Totally Weird and Wonderful Words is a book compiled and edited by Erin McKean, with rather splendid illustrations by Roz Chast and Danny Shanahan.

The book is published in paperback by the OUP at $14.95. (That's about £8.00) Why the OUP chose to put only the Dollar price on the cover is anyone's guess. As is the decision by the OUP to employ American English spelling in their books, but please do not get me started on THAT one!

As you would expect, the book is a mixture of odd, bizarre and entertaining words.

Is it a draffsack of odd and old words?
Or a logomachy, perhaps?

Read this book and you will discover words that you probably never even had the vaguest idea even existed.

Learn that a loon-slatt was a Scottish coin, that a lolling-lobby was a derisive term for a monk, that a gallinipper is a large mosquito, that dromaeogathous means having the palate of an emu, that dretch means to trouble in sleep, or to be troubled in sleep.

If someone has a fear of the dark it could be said that they are suffering from nyctophobia.

The book is a lot of fun and should while away the time should you be feeling somewhat wabbit.

Draffsack = a bag of garbage
Logomachy = fighting about words
wabbit = A Scottish word meaning exhausted or slightly unwell

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