“Is there anyone alive who has more fun with words than Richard Lederer? In dozens of books, from Crazy English to The Word Circus, he has continually entertained and amazed us with his boundless knowledge of and enthusiasm for all things linguistic. Now, in Amazing Words, Lederer puts on yet another dazzling display, elucidating the wondrous stories and secrets that lie hidden in the language. There’s an ooh! and an ah! and a hearty ha-ha-ha! on every page.” —Charles Harrington Elster, author of The Accidents of Style “Richard Lederer has outdone Richard Lederer. Amazing Words is clever, compelling, and totally captivating. This book is for anyone and everyone who loves the English language. It is one of a dozen books I would select to take along if I were exiled to a desert island.” —Paul Dickson, author of Words “This is not simply a book about Amazing Words, it is also an amazing book about words—and one that could have only been written by the inimitable Richard Lederer. Enjoy, word lovers, enjoy!” —Dr. Mardy Grothe, author of I Never Metaphor I Didn’t Like “Amazing Words is chock full of constant surprise. Each entry is a font of delight and knowledge. I had to keep reading because I unfailingly wanted to see how the next word would bedazzle, beguile, and bewitch me.” 2 —Caroline McCullagh, author of American Trivia “Every page instructs, delights, and entrances readers—often all at once.” —Rod L. Evans, author of Tyrannosaurus Lex “Words are wonderfully interesting, yes, but only Richard Lederer makes them amazing.” —Robert Hartwell Fiske, editor of The Vocabula Review and author of The Best Words “Richard Lederer’s Amazing Words is amazing indeed. He introduces you to new and unfamiliar words, and teaches you things you didn’t know about familiar ones. You’ll learn the surprising origins of words we use every day and the meanings of common expressions you probably took for granted. There’s much more in these pages that will make you a better writer or reader: grammar and style advice, literary and rhetorical devices, vocabulary, slang. Best of all are the puns, games, wordplay, and other forms of recreational linguistics that reveal just how much fun our wonderful English language can be. It’s a cliché (one of the topics discussed, of course) to say that something is ‘as entertaining as it is educational.’ But that description applies perfectly to Amazing Words.” —Don Hauptman, author of Cruel and Unusual Puns 3 Praise for Amazing Words 4 Praise for Richard Lederer “Columnist and punster Richard Lederer may be William Safire’s only living peer at writing about grammar, word usage, and derivations.” —Washington Post Book World “Lederer beguiles and bedazzles.” —Los Angeles Times “Richard Lederer ought to be declared a national treasure.” —Richmond Times Dispatch “Richard Lederer is the true King of Language Comedy.” —Sidney Sheldon, author of After the Darkness “Columnist Extraordinaire.” —The New Yorker “Richard Lederer opens the treasure chest of English and delights in each shiny coin he finds.” —Rob Kyff, a.k.a. “The Word Guy,” nationally syndicated language columnist and author of Once Upon a Word 5 6 Also by Richard Lederer Adventures of a Verbivore American Trivia (with Caroline McCullagh) Anguished English Animal Crackers Junior (with Jim Ertner) The Ants Are My Friends (with Stan Kegel) Basic Verbal Skills (with Philip Burnham) The Big Book of Word Play Crosswords (with Gayle Dean) The Bride of Anguished English Building Bridge (with Bo Schambelan and Arnold Fisher) The Circus of Words Classic Literary Trivia Cleverly Comical Animal Jokes (with Jim Ertner) Comma Sense (with John Shore) Crazy English The Cunning Linguist Fractured English 7 Get Thee to a Punnery The Giant Book of Animal Jokes (with Jim Ertner) The Gift of Age Have Yourself a Punny Little Christmas Hilarious Holiday Jokes (with Stan Kegel) Literary Trivia A Man of My Words The Miracle of Language More Anguished English The Play of Words Presidential Trivia Pun & Games Puns Spooken Here The Revenge of Anguished English Rip Roaring Animal Jokes (with Jim Ertner) Sleeping Dogs Don’t Lay (with Richard Dowis) Super Funny Animal Jokes (with Jim Ertner) 8 A Treasury for Cat Lovers A Treasury for Dog Lovers Wild & Wacky Animal Jokes (with Jim Ertner) The Word Circus Word Wizard The Write Way (with Richard Dowis) 9 10 11 to Jim Schuette and Kel Winter, for the loving labors of Marion Street Press in publishing my books 12 Acknowledgment I thank Merriam-Webster, Inc. (www.Merriam-Webster.com), for permission to adapt entries from my book The Word Circus for Amazing Words. 13 Published by Marion Street Press 4207 SE Woodstock Blvd # 168 Portland, OR 97206-6267 USA http://www.marionstreetpress.com/ Orders and review copies: (800) 888-4741 Copyright © 2012 by Richard Lederer All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America ISBN 978-1-936863-30-3 Back cover photo by Kim Treffinger Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data pending 14 t seventy-four years of youth, I consider myself to be one of the luckiest men on the face of the earth. ALooking back at my life, I can honestly say that I have pretty much closed the distance between who I am and what I do. When you love what you do, you never work a day in your life, and writing forty books has never felt like work. Especially this one. That’s because the good people at Marion Street Press asked me to present to the world the approximately three hundred most amazing words I know. “O Frabjous day! Kaloo! Kalay!” I chortled in my joy. I’ve hung around with words my whole life, and many of them have become fast friends. Now I’ve been gifted with the opportunity to share with my readers the most logologically, etymologically, and linguistically amazing words among them. Those three adverbs—etymologically, logologically, and linguistically—make for a mouthful, so I’ll illustrate their uses with the word usher. Like humanity, usher has a long history, going all the way back to the Latin ostium, “door,” related to os, “mouth,” because a door was likened to the mouth of a building. Usher, then, turns out to be a body metaphor for a person who stands at a door. That’s etymology. The Greek étymon means “true, original,” and the Greek-ending logíā means “science or study.” Thus, etymology is the science or study of true and 15 original word meanings. What unalloyed fun I’ve had auditioning a flash mob of amazing words for Amazing Words and spinning out the yarns of the origins of the most bedazzling, beguiling, and bewitching of those words in our glorious, uproarious, notorious, outrageous, courageous, contagious, stupendous, tremendous, end-over-endous English language. Has there ever been another word as human as usher? In sound and meaning it is not a paragon among words, but it accommodates the full spectrum of humankind. Living in the house of usher, within its brief compass of five letters, we find, with the order of letters preserved, the pronouns us, she, he, and her. That’s an example of logology—the dance of the alphabet, the revelation, the showing forth, of letter patterns that cavort and caper inside words. Take it from me, Riddler Reacher, which is an anagram—a rearrangement—of all the letters in my name, Richard Lederer. Usher winkingly reminds us that all words are created by people and that language unfailingly reflects the thrilling contradictions of our kind. Thus, even though writers write, bakers bake, hunters hunt, preachers preach, and teachers teach, grocers don’t groce, butchers don’t butch, carpenters don’t carpent, milliners don’t millin, haberdashers don’t haberdash—and ushers don’t ush. That’s an area of linguistics, the scientific study of language, in this case taking words apart to analyze and play with their meaning-bearing elements. 16 As International Punster of the Year (no kidding; there really is such a title), I promise you that a fair piece of the wordplay in this book will be puns. After all, a good pun is like a good steak—a rare medium well done—and an excellent pun is its own reword. I invite you to come through the entrance of this book; I guarantee it will entrance you. The entry for entrance will explain how we use both those words, which are made from the same letters but feature different etymologies, meanings, pronunciations, and accents. Like usher and entrance, the words you are about to meet in this book are seldom fancy or arcane or sesquipedalianly long. Rather, they are words you pal around with every day, and you’re about to get to know a thousand of them a lot better. Words are who we are. Words are what we do. Words inspire the heart, spark the mind, beget laughter. Words move the world. Words are as great a joy as food and drink and sex. May Amazing Words fill you with such tasty, palate-rinsing, and connecting pleasure. Richard Lederer San Diego, California [email protected] 17 18 19 A is an article, as in “a word,” as well as the first letter of the alphabet. Turns out that quite the majority of our letters are also words or sound like words: A: a B: be, bee C: sea, see G: gee I: aye, eye, I J: jay K: quay L: el M: em N: en O: O, oh, owe P: pea, pee Q: cue, queue R: are T: tea, tee 20 U: ewe, yew, you X: ex Y: why And more than half our letters, when pluralized, sound like words: B’s: bees C’s: seas, sees, seize E’s: ease G’s: geez I’s: ayes, eyes J’s: jays K’s: quays L’s: els M’s: ems N’s: ens O’s: ohs, owes P’s: peas, pease, pees Q’s: cues, queues 21 T’s: teas, tease, tees U’s: ewes, use, yews, youse X’s: exes Y’s: wise, whys (See EXPEDIENCY, I, Q-TIPS, S, SILENT, W, X.) Abecedarian is a letter-perfect word that means “pertaining to the alphabet, or alphabetically arranged.” This book is abecedarian in both senses of that definition.