Have you ever searched for the same vaguely obscene-sounding word to describe a self-igniting match and a 19th century band of political radicals?
After once again denigrating our feckless public officials, have you ever wondered how you would describe a politicial with an abundance of 'feck'?
Lying awake in bed at night, have you asked yourself why you have only malapert friends?
If you find yourself repeatedly asking these or similar questions, you may be in dire need of a book that offers a rich sampling of strange -- but always entertaining -- words and terms. Norman Schur, the irrepressible author of three critically acclaimed '1000 Most' dictionaries and BRITISH ENGLISH, A TO ZED, has now culled a witty lexicon from just those regions of the human imagination that only obscure words can describe.
Though all Mr. Schur's previous books have cleaved to the practical aim of enriching readers' vocabularies, this volume is a shameless display of outright word-worship. Here will be found the least remembered and most forlorn words still somehow alive -- if barely breathing -- in the English language. Although most readers will probably never run across, let alone use, any of the words lovingly scrutinized and resusciated by Mr. Schur in this volume, that does not mean any of them will soon be forgotten. Perhaps no lexicographer since Dr. Johnson has been able to stimulate all the body's humours so effectively through the discussion of etymology!