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