Another Word A Day: An All-New Romp through Some of the Most Unusual and Intriguing Words in English

by Anu Garg

A smorgasbord of surprising, obscure, and exotic wordsIn this delightful encore to the national bestseller A Word A Day, Anu Garg, the founder of the wildly popular A Word A Day Web site (wordsmith.org), presents an all-new collection of unusual, intriguing words and real-life anecdotes that will thrill writers, scholars, and word buffs everywhere. Another Word A Day celebrates the English language in all its quirkiness, grandeur, and fun, and features new chapters ranging from ""Words Formed Erroneously"" and ""Red-Herring Words"" to ""Kangaroo Words,"" ""Discover the Theme,"" and ""What Does That Company Name Mean?"" In them, you'll find a treasure trove of curious and compelling words, including agelast, dragoman, mittimus, nyctalopia, quacksalver, scission, tattersall, and zugzwang. Each entry includes a concise definition, etymology, and usage example, interspersed with illuminating quotations.

Praise for a word a day

""Anu Garg's many readers await their A Word A Day rations hungrily. Now at last here's a feast for them and other verbivores. Eat up!""
--Barbara Wallraff, Senior Editor at "The Atlantic Monthly" and author of "Word Court"

""AWADies will be familiar with Anu Garg's refreshing approach to words: words are fun and they have fascinating histories.""
--John Simpson, Chief Editor, "Oxford English Dictionary"

Genres: Reference, Nonfiction

244 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2005

Reviews

[Rowan MacBean · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's hard to write recommendations/reviews of grammar books. I mean, pretty much it can be summed up with, "Are you a word geek? If you are, you'll get something out of this. If you're not, you'll be bored to sobs." But I think even people who aren't especially enthusiastic about etymology and the like might end up enjoying this one. Like the paragraph from the back of the book says, the definitions and etymologies are concise but also very informative. Sometimes when I read books similar to this one, I start to lose patience and skim a bit, but that wasn't the case here at all. Most pages have an interesting-but-unrelated-to-anything-in- particular quote at the bottom (the first page of each chapter doesn't) and it's full of questions, comments and stories behind words that wordsmith.org readers have contributed. Seriously, at one point there's even a short Sherlock Holmes fanfic. No kidding.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good stuff - google "a word a day" and sign up for the daily email/newsletter.

[Anne Marshall · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really interesting and some great quotes as well.

[Varrsity · Rating 5 out of 5]

Useful for writers and avid readers.

[Fred Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun and entertaining to read a couple chapters a day.

[Velvet Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clear, concise, and fundamental

[Arwa Alaqil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pretty interesting and useful book, especially for wordsmiths.