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There's a Word for It (Revised Edition): A Grandiloquent Guide to Life
Here's an irresistible invitation to discover a treasure trove of exceptional words you can use to add sophistication to your vocabulary and charm to your repartee. Consider that without realizing it you may have engaged in acokoinonia (sex without passion or desire), been bored to tears by the company of a philodox (someone in love with his or her opinions), or suffered from recurrent matutolypea (getting up on the wrong side of the bed). Presented with panache by the language connoisseur whom William Safire calls "ek-STROR-di-ner-ee," There's a Word for It will add a dash of wit to your daily life -- lest anyone mistake you for a sumph (stupid oaf) or fritlag (a good-for-nothing).
272 pages, Paperback
First published July 2, 1996
2 people are currently reading
252 people want to read
About the author
Charles Harrington Elster
45 books53 followersCharles Harrington Elster is a writer, broadcaster, and logophile—a lover of words.
He is the author and narrator of the audio vocabulary-building program Verbal Advantage and the book by the same name. His other books include Tooth and Nail and Test of Time, vocabulary-building novels for high school students preparing to take the college entrance exams; There's a Word for It, a lighthearted look at unusual—and unusually useful—words; and The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations, which William Safire of The New York Times hailed as "the best survey of the spoken field in years." In 2005 Harcourt published What in the Word? Wordplay, Word Lore, and Answers to Your Peskiest Questions About Language, and in 2006 Houghton Mifflin released the second edition of The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations, featuring nearly 200 new entries.
Charlie was pronunciation editor of the seventh and eighth editions of Black's Law Dictionary and a consultant for Garner's Modern American Usage. He is a guest contributor to the "On Language" column of The New York Times Magazine, and his articles have appeared in the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the San Diego Union-Tribune, and other publications.
Charlie has also been talking about language on the radio since 1985. He has been interviewed on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, Weekend Edition, and All Things Considered and been a guest on hundreds of radio shows around the country. For five and a half years he cohosted a weekly public radio talk show on language called A Way with Words.
Charlie was born in New York City in 1957 and earned his B.A. cum laude from Yale in 1981. He lives in San Diego with his wife and two daughters.
He is the author and narrator of the audio vocabulary-building program Verbal Advantage and the book by the same name. His other books include Tooth and Nail and Test of Time, vocabulary-building novels for high school students preparing to take the college entrance exams; There's a Word for It, a lighthearted look at unusual—and unusually useful—words; and The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations, which William Safire of The New York Times hailed as "the best survey of the spoken field in years." In 2005 Harcourt published What in the Word? Wordplay, Word Lore, and Answers to Your Peskiest Questions About Language, and in 2006 Houghton Mifflin released the second edition of The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations, featuring nearly 200 new entries.
Charlie was pronunciation editor of the seventh and eighth editions of Black's Law Dictionary and a consultant for Garner's Modern American Usage. He is a guest contributor to the "On Language" column of The New York Times Magazine, and his articles have appeared in the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the San Diego Union-Tribune, and other publications.
Charlie has also been talking about language on the radio since 1985. He has been interviewed on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, Weekend Edition, and All Things Considered and been a guest on hundreds of radio shows around the country. For five and a half years he cohosted a weekly public radio talk show on language called A Way with Words.
Charlie was born in New York City in 1957 and earned his B.A. cum laude from Yale in 1981. He lives in San Diego with his wife and two daughters.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
July 24, 2010
I acquired this book in high school and held onto it until very recently. Ostensibly it is the exact sort of book that I am programmed to love - a big ol' list of fun and obscure words and their definitions, with amusing stories interspersed at regular intervals. For a while I was making an entire line of very popular buttons based on the words and definitions in this book. My one criticism of There's a Word for It! is that I now realize that the author does not put sufficient effort into distinguishing between words that have enough of a history in the English language to be widely considered "real," and words which were coined recently by himself or someone else and really have very few usage examples to legitimize them. This didn't strike me as such an annoying flaw when I was in high school, but now I demand more back-story from my obscure word books. Still, quite an entertaining read.
April 7, 2018
If you've ever wanted to know...
July 22, 2024
I'm always using this to learn more. It's wonderful.
June 7, 2024
I've read other books about words, and this was by far the most boring. I enjoy books about words. This would make for a good reference on your shelf, like a dictionary, or a thesaurus. But I'm reviewing it as a book, and it just is not a good read.
February 8, 2009
H. There's a Word for It: A Grandiloquent Guide to Life.
Elster, Charles Harrington: 1416510869
Right in the opening sentence, Charles Harrington Elster lets us know that we are in entertaining company: "... what you're about to read (if you dare) is a work of the utmost intellectual incontinence written by a man who is plumb crazy, stark raving mad, and out of his grandiloquent gourd about words".
Let me get this out of the way at the start. I am a fan of CHE. The man's got style. He's got a sense of humor. His enthusiasm is infectious. And he understands perfectly the kinds of words readers get a kick out of. This reader, anyway.
Coverage: 5 out of 5
Scholarship: 4 out of 5
User-friendliness: 4 out of 5
Charm: 5 out of 5
This is not a dictionary. Elster eschews the standard alphabetical listing, choosing instead to group entries by theme. He considers twelve main categories:
1. Health and Disease.
2. Food and Drink.
3. Love, Sex and Perversion.
4. Argument and Insults.
5. Words to describe People.
6. Phobias.
7. Religion, Belief and Divination.
8. Politics and Business.
9. Knowledge and Communication.
10. Sound and Fury: Human/Animal Noise and Behavior.
11. Uncommon Words for Everyday Things.
12. Epilogue: Some Words that make Life Living.
Chapters have further useful subdivisions. For example, the reader may choose an insult from such categories as: slobs and fops, gluttons, slackers, idiots, thieves and spongers, crummy kids, animal insults, dwelling places and eating habits, and miscellaneous unclassifiable nastiness.
The delight you derive from this book will be directly proportional to your degree of word-geekishness. Most of the words in this book are not strictly necessary . (300 different phobias, 100 ways of predicting the future, all those very specific words for collectors of various stripes?) But their existence surely makes the world a little bit more interesting.
QUIZ:
1. A collector of postcards is a ?
2. Fear of crossing bridges is ?
3. Someone who sprays saliva when speaking is ?
4. The study of miracles is known as ?
5. The summer version of hibernation is?
6. The fur-covered pouch attached to a kilt is a ?
7. The groove in the middle of your upper lip is ?
8. Food that you spit out, e.g. seeds or pips, is ?
9. Sublimation of sexual desire through cooking is ?
10. What word describes a pubic wig?
11. A word meaning 'like, or related to, an ostrich?
12. A person who habitually drops in uninvited at mealtimes is known as a ?
4.5 stars, rounded up to 5.
Elster, Charles Harrington: 1416510869
Right in the opening sentence, Charles Harrington Elster lets us know that we are in entertaining company: "... what you're about to read (if you dare) is a work of the utmost intellectual incontinence written by a man who is plumb crazy, stark raving mad, and out of his grandiloquent gourd about words".
Let me get this out of the way at the start. I am a fan of CHE. The man's got style. He's got a sense of humor. His enthusiasm is infectious. And he understands perfectly the kinds of words readers get a kick out of. This reader, anyway.
Coverage: 5 out of 5
Scholarship: 4 out of 5
User-friendliness: 4 out of 5
Charm: 5 out of 5
This is not a dictionary. Elster eschews the standard alphabetical listing, choosing instead to group entries by theme. He considers twelve main categories:
1. Health and Disease.
2. Food and Drink.
3. Love, Sex and Perversion.
4. Argument and Insults.
5. Words to describe People.
6. Phobias.
7. Religion, Belief and Divination.
8. Politics and Business.
9. Knowledge and Communication.
10. Sound and Fury: Human/Animal Noise and Behavior.
11. Uncommon Words for Everyday Things.
12. Epilogue: Some Words that make Life Living.
Chapters have further useful subdivisions. For example, the reader may choose an insult from such categories as: slobs and fops, gluttons, slackers, idiots, thieves and spongers, crummy kids, animal insults, dwelling places and eating habits, and miscellaneous unclassifiable nastiness.
The delight you derive from this book will be directly proportional to your degree of word-geekishness. Most of the words in this book are not strictly necessary . (300 different phobias, 100 ways of predicting the future, all those very specific words for collectors of various stripes?) But their existence surely makes the world a little bit more interesting.
QUIZ:
1. A collector of postcards is a ?
2. Fear of crossing bridges is ?
3. Someone who sprays saliva when speaking is ?
4. The study of miracles is known as ?
5. The summer version of hibernation is?
6. The fur-covered pouch attached to a kilt is a ?
7. The groove in the middle of your upper lip is ?
8. Food that you spit out, e.g. seeds or pips, is ?
9. Sublimation of sexual desire through cooking is ?
10. What word describes a pubic wig?
11. A word meaning 'like, or related to, an ostrich?
12. A person who habitually drops in uninvited at mealtimes is known as a ?
4.5 stars, rounded up to 5.
July 14, 2009
Being an unabashed logophile and verbivore, this book speaks to me on SO many levels and had me literally jumping and wriggling in my seat in surprise and delight - ...There's a word for THAT?!?
It would be a difficult read for people with relatively limited vocabularies, since much of the prose is bombastic in the extreme (lacking the pejorative connotation, of course), but would be a rewarding endeavor. Never pretentious, this book is a sheer celebration of the variety, complexity, and thoroughness of the English language in constructing words for more sensations, ideas, and predilections than one would think!
THANK YOU, Charles Harrington Elster!! I hope my kids enjoy you as much as I did...
It would be a difficult read for people with relatively limited vocabularies, since much of the prose is bombastic in the extreme (lacking the pejorative connotation, of course), but would be a rewarding endeavor. Never pretentious, this book is a sheer celebration of the variety, complexity, and thoroughness of the English language in constructing words for more sensations, ideas, and predilections than one would think!
THANK YOU, Charles Harrington Elster!! I hope my kids enjoy you as much as I did...
November 20, 2015
I wish I had more opportunities to use the words in this book, because they're fantastic.
There are plenty of words that can be used day to day (you can stop calling those little plastic things at the end of your shoelaces "Those little plastic things at the end of my shoelaces". They have a name).
There's a very comprehensive section on phobias, with emphasis on the strange (fear of being right? Rectiphobia.), as well as occupations.
But I think my favorite (and the most useful and fun) part was the section of insults (ever call someone a grobian?).
This book isn't just for Word Nerds. Everyone can find a heap of useful bits here.
There are plenty of words that can be used day to day (you can stop calling those little plastic things at the end of your shoelaces "Those little plastic things at the end of my shoelaces". They have a name).
There's a very comprehensive section on phobias, with emphasis on the strange (fear of being right? Rectiphobia.), as well as occupations.
But I think my favorite (and the most useful and fun) part was the section of insults (ever call someone a grobian?).
This book isn't just for Word Nerds. Everyone can find a heap of useful bits here.
February 11, 2009
Really a great little book for expanding the vocabulary with the most random and interesting assortment of words I have ever seen! Elster made me laugh out loud a number of times and I never felt the reading to be very dry or boring, even given its non-adventurous subject matter. It's slow going for me because I am stopping to sound out and remember all the words I can. These words are crazy, so that tends to take a while. I might spend five or so minutes on a single page.
This is definitely worth picking up if you're ever interested in learning of or about words that you never knew existed.
This is definitely worth picking up if you're ever interested in learning of or about words that you never knew existed.
May 2, 2013
This book isn't so much didactic as diverting. It's not designed to provide words that an educated person should know; rather, it's more like a playground for the erudite individual who has long been at ease with most of "those" words.
The author does not merely, in lexically pedestrian fashion, present lists of words with each chapter; he includes plenty of playful discussion, incorporating gleeful grandiloquence at every opportunity. One gets the clear impression that he's having a good deal of fun in the process.
The author does not merely, in lexically pedestrian fashion, present lists of words with each chapter; he includes plenty of playful discussion, incorporating gleeful grandiloquence at every opportunity. One gets the clear impression that he's having a good deal of fun in the process.
February 29, 2008
A dictionary has never been so good. This book is full of words you will never need, thus I need them.
September 27, 2008
If you're a philologist, logophile or want to expand your vocabulary, this book is for you!
April 11, 2011
Although I will probably use the words in this book infrequently, I loved to read it and learn. Language is amazing in it's ability to portray very specific meanings.
June 7, 2013
An esoteric collection! Many of the words aren't on dictionary.com. Elster is hilarious. Great read.
January 6, 2015
I really enjoyed this book. I think it would be an amazing present book for teachers.
February 21, 2012
great book. you will learn so much and your head will hurt from it lol. :)
June 3, 2014
Lots of fun words to add the vocabulary and also some advice about life.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews