Wordcatcher (49 page)

Barfield, Owen.
The History in English Words.
Foreword by W. H. Auden. Great Barrington, Mass.: Lindisfarne Press, 1985.

Bartlett, John.
Bartlett’s Shakespeare Quotations
. New York and Boston: Little, Brown, 2005.

Basbane, Nicholas.
A Gentle Madness
. New York: Henry Holt, 1996.

Berlitz, Charles.
Native Tongues: A Book of Captivating Facts on
Languages and Their Origins
. New York: Grossett & Dunlap, 1982.

Bierce, Ambrose.
The Devil’s Dictionary
. Cleveland and New York: World Publishing, 1941.

Black, Donald Chain.
Spoonerisms, Sycophants and Sops: A Celebration of Fascinating Facts About Words.
New York: Harper & Row, 1988.

Blount, Roy Jr.
Alphabet Juice: The Energies, Gists, and Spirits of Letters, Words, and Combinations Thereof; Their Roots, Bones, Innards, Piths, Pips, and Secret Parts, Tinctures, Tonics, and Essences; With Examples of Their Usage Foul and Savory
. New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2008.

Blount, Thomas.
Glossographia
. 1656.

Bowler, Peter.
The Superior Person’s Book of Words
. Boston: David R. Godine, 1977.

______.
The Superior Person’s Second Book of Words.
Boston: David R. Godine, 1987.

______
. The Superior Person’s Third Book of Words.
Boston: David R. Godine, 1997.

Brewer, E. Cobham.
Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase & Fable
. Centenary edition, revised. Edited by Ivor H. Evans. New York: Harper & Row, 1981.

Bryson, Bill.
Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States
. New York: William Morrow, 1994.

Cassidy, Daniel.
How the Irish Invented Slang: The Secret Language at the Crossroads.
Petrolia, Calif.: CounterPunch/AK Press, 2007.

Cawdrey, Robert.
The First English Dictionary: 1604
. John Simpson, ed. Oxford: Bodleian Library, University of Oxford Press, 2007.

Ciardi, John.
A Browser’s Dictionary: A Compendium of Curious Expressions & Intriguing Facts
. New York: Harper & Row, 1980.

Coleridge, Herbert.
A Dictionary of the First or Oldest Words in the English Language: From the Semi-Saxon Period of AD 1250-1300: Consisting of an Alphabetical Inventory of Every Word Found in the Printed English Literature of the 13th Century.
London: John Camden Hotten, Piccadilly, 1862.

Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English.
H. W. Fowler, ed. Fourth Edition. Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1956.

Crabb’s English Synonyms.
Revised and enlarged. New York and London: Harper and Brothers, 1917.

Danziger, Danny.
The Watchamacallit: Those Everyday Objects You Just Can’t Name (And Things You Think You Know About, but Don’t)
. New York: Hyperion, 2009.

Decharne, Max.
Straight from the Fridge, Dad: A Dictionary of Hipster Slang.
New York: Broadway Books, 2001.

Ernst, Margaret S.
More About Words
. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951.

Farwell, Harold F. Jr., and J. Karl Nicholas, eds.
Smoky Mountain Voices: A Lexicon of Southern Appalachian Speech.
Lexington, Ky.: University of Kentucky Press, 1993.

Florio, John.
A Worlde of Wordes, Or Most copious, and exact Dictionairie in Italian and English.
First published in 1598. Republished in 1611 as
Queen Anne’s New Worlde of Wordes.

Funk, Charles Earle, and Charles Earle Funk Jr.
Horsefeathers & Other Curious Words
. New York: Harper & Row, 1958.

Funk, Wilfred.
Word Origins and Their Romantic Stories
. New York: Bell Publishing, 1978.

Garrison, Webb.
Why You Say It.
New York and Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1955.

Gifis, Steven H.
Law Dictionary
. Woodbury, N.Y.: Barron’s Educational Series, 1975.

Green, Jonathon.
Chasing the Sun: Dictionary Makers and the Dictionaries They Made
. New York: Henry Holt, 1996.

Grose, Francis, Captain.
Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: A Dictionary of Buckish Slang, University Wit, and Pickpocket Eloquence.
Unabridged, from the original 1811 edition. Nu-Vision Publications, 2007.

Halliwell, James Orchard.
Dictionary of Archaic Words.
London: Bracken Books, 1989. Originally published in London, 1850.

Heifetz, Josepha (Mrs. Byrne).
Mrs. Byrne’s Dictionary.
Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Books, 1974.

Hellweg, Paul.
The Insomniac’s Dictionary: The Last Word on the Odd Word.
New York: Ballantine Books, 1986.

Hitchings, Henry.
Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary: The Extraordinary Story of the Book That Defined the World
. London: John Murray Publishers, 2005.

Hook, J. N.
The Grand Panjandrum: And 1,999 Other Rare, Useful, and Delightful Words and Expressions.
New York: MacMillan Publishing, 1980.

Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations
. Completely revised
and greatly enlarged by Kate Louise Roberts. New York and London: Funk & Wagnalls, 1922.

Johnson, Samuel.
A Dictionary of the English Language.
First published 1755. New edition, edited, compiled by David Crystal. London: Penguin Books, 2002.

______.
Johnson’s Insults.
Jack Lynch, ed. New York: Walker Publishing, 2004.

Kacirk, Jeffrey.
Altered English: Surprising Meanings of Familiar Words
. Petaluma, Calif.: Pomegranate Books, 2002.

Kinneally, Christine.
The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language.
New York: Penguin Books, 2007.

Lempriere, J.
Lempriere’s Classical Dictionary of Proper Names mentioned in Ancient Authors
. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, reprinted 1958. First published 1788.

Lepore, Jill.
A Is for American: Letters and Other Characters in the Newly United States
. New York: Vintage Books, 2003.

Mackay, Charles.
Lost Beauties of the English Language.
London: Bibliophile Books, 1987. Originally published 1874.

MacNeil, Robert.
The Story of English
. (Revised edition.) New York: Penguin Books, 1993.

Mencken, H. L.
The American Language.
Volumes 1-4, plus Supplements 1-2. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1936, 1945, 1977.

Moore, Christopher J.
In Other Words: A Language Lover’s Guide to the Most Intriguing Words Around the World.
New York: Walker & Company, 2004.

Mugglestone, Lynda.
Lost for Words: The Hidden History of the Oxford English Dictionary.
New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 2005.

Novobatzky, Peter, and Ammon Shea.
Depraved and Insulting English: Words to Offend and Amuse
. New York, London, Sydney: Harcourt, 1999.

Olive, David.
A Devil’s Dictionary of Business Jargon
. Toronto: Key Porter Books, 2001.

Patterson, Ian.
A Dictionary of Color
. London: Thorogood Publishers, 2003.

Payack, Paul J. J.
A Million Words and Counting: How Global English Is Rewriting the World
. New York: Citadel Press, 2008.

Polastron, Lucien X.
Books on Fire: The Destruction of Libraries throughout History
. Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 2004.

Random House Dictionary of the English Language: The Unabridged Edition
. Jess Stein, ed. New York: Random House, 1967.

Reisner, Robert.
Graffiti: Two Thousand Years of Wall Writing
. Chicago: Cowles Book Company, 1971.

Rheingold, Howard.
They Have a Word For It: A Lighthearted Lexicon of Untranslatable Words and Phrases.
Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1988.

Rosten, Leo.
Hooray for Yiddish: A Book about English.
New York: Galahad Books, 1998.

Salny, Abbie F.
The Mensa Book of Words, Word Games, Puzzles & Oddities.
New York: HarperCollins, 1988.

Schuster, M. Lincoln.
A Treasury of the World’s Greatest Letters: From Alexander the Great to Thomas Mann
. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1940.

Shea, Ammon.
Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,430 Pages
. New York: Perigee Books, 2008.

Skeat, Walter W.
Concise Dictionary of English Etymology
. Hertfordshire, UK: Wordsworth Editions, 1993. First published 1882.

Sperling, Susan Kelz.
Lollibones
. New York: Penguin Books, 1977.

Stevenson, James A. C.
Dictionary of Scots Words & Phrases in Current Use.
London: Athlone Press, 1989.

Taylor, Joseph.
Antiquitates Curiosae: The Etymology of Many Remarkable Old Sayings, Proverbs, and Singular Customs
. Originally published 1820. Reprinted, San Francisco: Familiar Productions, 1995.

Wilton, David.
Word Myths: Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2008

Winchester, Simon.
The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary
. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

______.
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary
. New York: HarperCollins, 1998.

There is a coda at the end of George Plimpton’s wonderful posthumous collection of essays,
The Man in the Flying Lawn Chair
, titled “Wish List,” in which he lists the many things he would like to do before he dies. In that spirit of wishful thinking I offer here a final section of words, some untranslatable but indispensable, that I wish could be revived, used, and enjoyed for their sheer delight.

Charles Mackay titled his 19th-century dictionary
Lost Beauties
, to describe unfortunately abandoned, deleted, or misplaced words or derivations. Edifying examples abound, such as
emersal
, what a light wood does when released as it bops to the water’s surface, perhaps inspired by
emerge
. Also
hurkle
, to shrug shoulders.
Acnestis
refers to the part of an animal’s back that it just… can’t…reach to scratch. Brewer defines
merry-thoughts
as “the
furcula
or wishing-bone in the breast of a fowl; sometimes pulled asunder by two persons, the one holding the larger portion being supposed to have his wish.” Fellow words include
merry-go-sorry,
a story that conveys joy and sorrow, happiness and sadness, at same time: good news and bad news. If Mackay can immortalize a raft full of “lost beauties,” I can rescue a handful of “lost love-lies,” such as
skyme
, a glimmer of light, and
spoffle
, to look busy while trifling over little matters. Stevenson’s Scottish dictionary lists the wonderful mouthful
clishmaclaver
, idle talk, gossip—a word Scotland’s Radio Three describes as having built into it “a feeling of tongues wagging endlessly.” The OED provides us with the pugnacious
bully-scribbler,
a nasty writer. And one of the most charming derivations of all is Diane Ackerman’s discovery of the Aramaic origins of the word
poet
, which denotes, says she, the sound of water rushing over pebbles.

The Scottish
tartle
means “to hesitate in recognizing someone or something.” Far more fun—and forgivable—to say than that we’ve gone “brain-dead” when we meet somebody and can’t conjure up their name. An eye-popping illustration of this comes from the old Scottish term
groping
, which, according to Cox, 1828, was “a mode of catching trout by tickling them with the hands under rocks or banks.” Stevenson calls this Highlands and Borderlands practice
guddling
, “to catch fish with hands by feeling way into places in a stream where they may lurk. The ability to guddle trout is an admired skill.” Stevenson reports that in 1987 one Glasgow hospital averaged 21 soccer and rugby players “
hirpling
through the doors every week.” I can personally attest to the still widespread Scottish use of the hilarious-sounding
hirple
, to walk with a limp, to hobble. When I was hospitalized for pneumonia in northern Scotland in the summer of 2007, I overheard one nurse joking to another,
“Did ye see the Yank
hirpling
in here this afternoon?”

And finally, a last word to consider reviving: the Greek
aposiopesis
, which means “becoming silent.” Remember the old radio comedy
Fibber McGee and Molly
? Each show ended with Fibber saying , “I’ll just look here in the hall closet, and—” followed by crashing sounds and then pure, golden, cleansing silence.