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Product Description
From Library Journal
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
Barbara Wallraff author of Word Court What fun The Word Museum is. It is a bouffage -- an absolute yeepsen -- for word-peckers, and that's no scaum.
Justin Kaplan and Anne Bernays authors of The Language of Names It's an absolutely delicious book, a ten-course banquet for anyone with an appetite for words, dictionary games, and just plain fun.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Nothing Faffle About It,
By A.Trendl HungarianBookstore.com "What should ... (Glen Ellyn, IL USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten (Paperback)
Jeffrey Kacirk dedicates "The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Ever Forgotten" to Lewis Carroll because of the delectable verbiage introduced in "Jabberwocky." This seems right, as Kacirk's choice of words here are as fun, unique and rarely use Carroll's.This is not an etymological study, but an comfortable overview of antiquated words. He start off with 'abbey-lubber,' which is a pretentious loiterer in a religious house. I am unsure how I'll tastefully work this into a sentence next Sunday at church, but I am glad to have such a word in my quiver should the occasion arise. Don't dismay if, while reading this, you feel you are seeing words new to you. Most of these words haven't escaped rare book rooms in 200 years. For example, we prefer, 'librarian' over 'bibliothecary' and children tend to choose 'sleepy' instead of 'Billy-wink.' As Kacirk defines words, he slips in a number of woodcut illustrations, adding to the appeal. They are always somehow correlated with a word on that page. Grab a glass of something cold, and thoughtfully stroke your 'ziff' (beard) while reading this in a 'zypthesary' (brewhouse). It may be 'faffle' (work occupied requiring much labor with non-commensurate results), but maybe not. I enjoyed "The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Ever Forgotten" by Jeffrey Kacirk. Anthony Trendl
1.0 out of 5 stars
Far far less than it could have or should have been,
By
This review is from: The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten (Paperback)
Jeffrey Kacirk's "The Word Museum" piqued my interest just by its basic promise, a book about words and their antiquated meanings. It sounds like a very good idea. Unfortunately, Kacirk botched the execution of it and what resulted was a very subpar and mostly uninteresting collection of word definitions. That's it, just definitions. The worst part is, usage dates (dates the words might have been in use) contextual quotes and word origins weren't even included. Well, actually, usage dates were included, by way of the name of an author who used it, that you had to go and look up in a glossary at the back of the book. Talk about unnecessarily cludgy and annoying. Ok, the origin of words is a bit complex to research for a book, but the other two shouldn't have been that difficult. Had Kacirk actually put the usage dates along with the definitions, and included a contextual quote (most of the authors were before 1900 so copyrights wouldn't be an issue), this book would have been far more interesting and worth spending money on.
3.0 out of 5 stars
A little disappointing,
By
This review is from: The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten (Paperback)
I thought that there would be more information about the origin and usage of the words. I was expecting something more along the lines of "the Professor and the Madman"---something that gave a historical view of why words stopped being popularly used. However, it's interesting to look over the lists of definitions---you can almost hear how people used to talk.
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