Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By David Astle, Allen & Unwin, $9.99.
Fun facts about weird words may not be everyone’s idea of enjoyment, but when there’s an opportunity to get educated, then the offer is too good to refuse.
It’s anything but tedious. Discovering the entertaining truths about 101 weirdest words in the English language, that is. There are also three bonus fake words. Perhaps, you can spot them.
This mini-dictionary is jam-packed with unusual or interesting words, followed by fun and descriptive definition for each one. It’s an adventure story set in a bewitching world of castles and conspiracy!
Filled with asinine pictures, and odd wordy facts, this is a book to sweep the reader through the alphabet from ambidextrous (no repeated letters) to ZugZwang (not a place you want to visit).
There’s also a substantial sprinkling of riddles, puzzles and bonus facts.
If extra challenges appeal, then you should have a go at recognising the three fakes in the collection. Is it yarg – the cheese that turned its maker backwards? Maybe it’s juffle – the semi-jig, semi-shuffle you do on a zebra crossing? Only a true word detective will crack this one.
Here’s the book to help you know, one way or the other, whether you can groak, know a lava-lava from a muu-muu or have you ever seen a chatoyant kalamazoo in a vomitorium?
“Weirdness is at every turn as we zoom from risley or rhopatic quidnunc to glabella or paraph” and many more brand new expressions. “Soon you’ll bump into balladonna and levidrome, plus a hundred other astounding words, discovering what they mean and how they ended up in English.”
It’s worth meeting all of them!
As well, there’s a helpful guide to pronouncing each oddity. While you play detective looking to find the mystery three fake words, don’t jump ahead and take a peek at the last page which has a nifty way to get to the answers!
Describing himself as a full-time word nerd, many will know Astle as the dictionary man on the TV show Letters and Numbers, or maybe just as DA, the devious crossword-setter in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
Broadcaster and writer of non-fiction, fiction and plays, David produces wordy-nerdy books with a engrossing carnival of words!
‘More than a dictionary, more than a mystery, 101 Weird Words is also a book abounding in mini-puzzles, corny riddles and cool word-facts, not to mention Paul Tippett’s zany pictures.’
So, there’s only one thing left to do: ‘it’s time to get wordy, weird and get reading’.
