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The Wordsworth Book of Intriguing Words
Book by Hellweg, P.
159 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 27, 2015
Find this and gift it to your favourite book-lover over the holidays. They will love you forever. Fucking brilliant!
March 23, 2018
Do you call all groups of mammals a herd? Read the book. Can you identify only 20 of your phobias or manias? Read the book. Do you miss the old words from before potatoes became potatoes? Read the book.
It is a delightful collection of words for a logophile. If you lack weird dictionary in your active English, you could pick almost at random some interesting words from here. It is like a small dictionary of weirdness where you can peak into for thrilling discoveries in the logoscape or when the need arises for a particular set of words.
I just picked it up basically at random from the library's free books and was pleasantly surprised. The topics were well structured, albeit they are really diverse and there is no real common topic except for being unusual words. I did not like the images that much (and they felt disconnected to the cover of my edition) and I would not mind being it longer (but that just shows how I enjoyed it).
It is a delightful collection of words for a logophile. If you lack weird dictionary in your active English, you could pick almost at random some interesting words from here. It is like a small dictionary of weirdness where you can peak into for thrilling discoveries in the logoscape or when the need arises for a particular set of words.
I just picked it up basically at random from the library's free books and was pleasantly surprised. The topics were well structured, albeit they are really diverse and there is no real common topic except for being unusual words. I did not like the images that much (and they felt disconnected to the cover of my edition) and I would not mind being it longer (but that just shows how I enjoyed it).
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June 22, 2025Fascinating little book of doo-dads, strictly for logophiles!
This is not a book that one is meant to read cover-to-cover, but I did. It is endlessly fascinating how so many [English] words exist, that even someone had the idea, let alone took the time and effort to create a form of letters. The small chapters are mostly in the form of lists; shortest and longest words, words pertaining to groups of animals, animal adjectives, sex-, government-, divination-related terms etc. Good fun to, erm, dip into but I will pass on to a fellow Bibliolater (book worshipper) or Logophile (lover of words), and I won't be a Bibliotaph (book hoarder)!
This is not a book that one is meant to read cover-to-cover, but I did. It is endlessly fascinating how so many [English] words exist, that even someone had the idea, let alone took the time and effort to create a form of letters. The small chapters are mostly in the form of lists; shortest and longest words, words pertaining to groups of animals, animal adjectives, sex-, government-, divination-related terms etc. Good fun to, erm, dip into but I will pass on to a fellow Bibliolater (book worshipper) or Logophile (lover of words), and I won't be a Bibliotaph (book hoarder)!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews