1 February 2003
Weird and Wonderful Words by Erin McKean is a fun, little book for those who delight in rare and odd words. If you ever wanted to know what jumentous means, this is the book for you (it means “resembling horse urine"). Or perhaps you were wondering about quangocrat? If so, McKean’s book will tell you it is a British English word for a petty bureaucrat who works at a quasi-autonomous non-governmental organization, or quango.
Now, this book and the words contained therein are not useful in any sense—unless you actually live a lifestyle where you might actually use the word jumentous, in which case I really do not want to know about it. The words are too obscure even for crossword puzzles. They most definitely are not kenspeckle (easily recognizable). Weird and Wonderful Words is strictly for fun.
The book is illustrated by New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast. She provides many ostrobogulous (unusual, interesting) drawings to illustrate various uses of the words.
If you like odd words, you could do worse than picking this book up. Who knows, it might help you increase your scibility (power of knowing).
Hardcover; 144 pages; Oxford University Press; October 2002; ISBN: 0195159055; $16.95.
[Note: Erin McKean was my editor at OUP for Word Myths.]
