The Endangered English Dictionary: Bodacious Words Your Dictionary Forgot

"Like animals, plants and book reviewers, words can become extinct, but Grambs is here to salvage the most missed of the lexical dinosaurs." - Patricia Holt, San Francisco Chronicle


We often hear about the richness of the English language, how many more words it contains than French or German. And yet modern desk dictionaries are the result of a paring away of that glory, so that merely standard, functional, current words remain. The price we pay for such convenience is the thousands of delightful words we never see or hear.


This book is an effort to save some of those words applicable to everyday life and countless word games from extinction. The resultant treasure trove of exotic verbal creatures is an indispensable resource for every lover of language.


A selection:




* egrutten: having a face swollen from weeping


* numquid: an inquisitive person


* sardoodledum: drama that is contrived, stagy, or unrealistic


* mimp: to purse one's lips


Read more Continue reading Read less AMAZON.COM REVIEW
Sometimes it seems that there are as many collections of archaic words as there are archaic words. Most of them are amusing in their own esoteric sort of way, but few aim for more than entertainment value. David Grambs watches over words gone (or going) by in the same way that the National Wildlife Federation watches over grizzly bears and timber wolves. He would like his readers to think of his Endangered English Dictionary as "a constant reminder of the words that could have been, that fell through the cracks. Or--" he challenges, "if you and enough others make imaginative use of this book--that still could become part of our everyday usage." Toward this goal, Grambs has chosen "common-use, nontechnical words," and he has arranged his book as a two-way dictionary. So if you are looking for a compact way to describe something--a flower, say--that smells strongest at night, try "noctuolucent." If you were a delicate blossom, or even a whole "tuzzymuzzy" (a bunch of flowers) , you too might wish to avoid the "sizzard" (unbearably humid heat) of summer days. --Jane Steinberg

--This text refers to the paperback edition. FROM LIBRARY JOURNAL
Grambs (The Describer's Dictionary, LJ 2/ 15/93) includes entries here not usually found in smaller paperback dictionaries- for example, "habile," which means able or skillful, and "uvid," which means moist or wet. His book is arranged in standard dictionary form with simplified meanings and usage illustrations, such as "dangerously esquillous lumber" (meaning splintery) . The work also includes an easy pronunciation system and a reverse glossary that allows the user to look up words by definition. The entries have been largely compiled from the OED, the second and third editions of Webster's New International Dictionary, and Funk & Wagnall's Standard Dictionary. Libraries that already own several of these dictionaries or at least one good one and a thesaurus will have little need for this title. Recommended only for libraries that collect heavily in this area.
Neal Wyatt, Mary Washington Coll. Lib., Fredericksburg, Va.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. REVIEW
Now that Grambs has introduced me to it, I plan to make good use of 'bloviation, ' meaning talking windily, as in political candidates or sports commentators.--Digby Diehl

The next time you see some guy stagger out of a bar ready to take on the world, 'drunk and feeling brave, ' you can dismiss him with a single word: potvaliant! That short, fat person nearby on the subway is fubsy, and his thickset companion is spuddy. The loudmouth a few seats away is bloviating, his babblative chatter little more than clatterfart. This can be addictive. . .--Jonathan Yardley --This text refers to the paperback edition. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Grambs has worked as a lexicographer, editor, travel reporter, and translator. He is the author of five other books pertaining to the English language, including The Endangered English Dictionary, and is coauthor of So You Think You Can Spell? with Ellen S. Levine. --This text refers to the paperback edition. Read more Continue reading Read less