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.