I Never Knew There Was a Word for It

by Adam Jacot de Boinod

From 'shotclog', a Yorkshire term for a companion only tolerated because he is paying for the drinks, to Albanian having 29 words to describe different kinds of eyebrows, the languages of the world are full of amazing, amusing and illuminating words and expressions that will improve absolutely everybody's quality of life. All they need is this book!

This bumper volume gathers all three of Adam Jacot de Boinod's acclaimed books about language - The Wonder of Whiffling, The Meaning of Tingo and Toujours Tingo (their fans include everyone from Stephen Fry to Michael Palin) - into one highly entertaining, keenly priced compendium. As Mariella Frostup said 'You'll never be lost for words again!'

Genres: Nonfiction, Linguistics, Language, Reference, Humor, Ebooks, History

800 pages, Paperback

First published August 5, 2010

About the author

Adam Jacot de Boinod is a British author, notable for his works about unusual words, such as his last name. Usually known as Jacot, he has written three books, the first two looking at words which have no equivalent in the English language, and his third book which reveals unusual words in English.

Reviews

[Lavinia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish there was a way of remembering everything I wanted to. I started taking notes at the beginning, but I gave up pretty soon. Unfortunately, the last third (when you're really pissed by its length) is - subjectively speaking- the most interesting.

[Rhian Davies · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book because I am a massive word geek and I am currently running a blog about strange and obscure words. It's a fascinating read, however I was disappointed to find several mistakes. One of the Welsh words mentioned (lledorweddle) should be 'lledorwedd', while the full spelling of Llanfair PG (you know the one) was incorrect. These, along with a few other examples, made me wonder how many other words were incorrect throughout the book. But maybe my pedantry stems from the fact that I am a Linguistics graduate, and so I don't think anyone should be put off buying the book if they are a little interested in strange words.

It is a very humorous book and a wonderful insight into other cultures. Despite its flaws, I would recommend it.

[Michelle Bacon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a combination of the 3 books by this author and is basically a hodge-podge of unique words or phrases that we have used over the course of human existence and their origins. One of the books is foreign phrases which were difficult to read since I didn't know how to pronounce the words. I think having the pronunciation next to the words or phrases would have been a little helpful but would have been even more like a dictionary than it already was.
Cute and informative tho.

[Dorin Budusan]

Although I didn't read all of it, it's a really funny book, from which you will learn a lot of funny words and all kinds of languages, words that you will probably never use.

[Kerry · Rating 2 out of 5]

Did you know there are words for snow in 5 different languages? There is a lot of that in here which is not very interesting. Did you know there are words in other languages which sound like English words but are false cogitates. Yeah, that was even less interesting. There were far too many lists of these sorts of things in here.

Basically, the only thing that kept me reading (a few pages at a time over probably 18 months) was the sections on idioms. The variety of ways different cultures express things was more what I was hoping to get from this book in general. And then the last 1/10th of the book got better because it was all dedicated to idioms in English.

[Eva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extraordinary. For a language enthusiast like me this collection was a real delicacy. It amused me, suprised me, made me laugh, made me wonder, and made me want to explore more. And made me want to share with the author a few words and expressions from Hungarian, my mother tongue.