Strange Bedfellows: The Private Lives of Words [Paperback]

“an etymological delight.” — Concordia University Magazine; “one of the more delightful books to hit my desk this season. . . . It’s a fascinating, informative, and engrossing book on a great number of words, their origin, original meaning, and for some of them, where the English language has stolen them from. It’s also often amusing, and I find myself still—weeks after getting the book—dipping into it.” — The Commentary, Interview; “Word nerds rejoice! . . . Howard Richler delivers another riotously funny and informative text.” — Telegraph-Journal

The bawdy English language has never been overly concerned with purity, and this promiscuous proclivity has contributed to many alluring word histories. Words, like species, evolve, and particularly those words that have been in existence for many centuries have undergone major evolutions in meaning. When you read Strange Bedfellows: The Private Lives of Words, you will discover the unexpected. For example, why gossiping in church is etymologically proper, and that words such as “avocado” and “porcelain” have past associations with some of the nether regions of the body. As Richler reveals, the English language has slept around for centuries and in the process has been “contaminated” by many foreign influences. Composed of short chapters with each containing ten words from specific fields, Strange Bedfellows will surprise and delight the reader.

Howard Richler is a long-time language journalist who has written four previous books on language: Global Mother Tongue: The Eight Flavours of English (Véhicule Press, 2007), A Bawdy Language: How a Second-Rate Language Slept Its Way to the Top (Stoddart, 1999), Take My Words, a Wordaholic’s Guide to the English Language (Ronsdale Press,1996), and The Dead Sea Scroll Palindromes (Robert Davies Publishing, 1995). Richler makes his home in Montreal.