Download or read book Petrichor of Words written by and published by . This book was released on 2021-09-09 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Reading the OED written by Ammon Shea and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-07-02 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An obsessive word lover's account of reading the entire Oxford English Dictionary, hailed as "the Super Size Me of lexicography." "I'm reading the OED so you don't have to," says Ammon Shea on his slightly masochistic journey to scale the word lover's Mount Everest: the Oxford English Dictionary. In 26 chapters filled with sharp wit, sheer delight, and a documentarian's keen eye, Shea shares his year inside the OED, delivering a hair-pulling, eye-crossing account of reading every word.

Download or read book The Slang Dictionary Etymological Historical and Anecdotal written by John Camden Hotten and published by London : Chatto and Windus. This book was released on 1874 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Dictionary of Difficult Words written by Jane Solomon and published by Frances Lincoln Children's Books. This book was released on 2019-05-02 with total page 115 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ​What is a bumbershoot? Or a moonbow? And what does it mean when someone absquatulates...? Find out all this and more in The Dictionary of Difficult Words. Test your knowledge with more than 400 words to amaze, confuse, and inspire budding wordsmiths (and adults). All of the words featured in this book are difficult to spell, hard to say, and their meanings are obscure to most children (and most adults)! Written with simple, easy-to-understand definitions by lexicographer Jane Solomon, this dictionary celebrates the beauty of the English language for family trivia time spent around the printed page.

Download or read book The Merriam Webster Thesaurus written by Merriam-Webster, Inc and published by Merriam-Webster Incorporated. This book was released on 2006 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'The Merriam-Webster Thesaurus' offers over 157,000 synonyms, antonyms, related and contrasted words and idioms, all alphabetically organised with brief definitions of shared meanings.

Download or read book The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows written by John Koenig and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-11-16 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “It’s undeniably thrilling to find words for our strangest feelings…Koenig casts light into lonely corners of human experience…An enchanting book. “ —The Washington Post A truly original book in every sense of the word, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows poetically defines emotions that we all feel but don’t have the words to express—until now. Have you ever wondered about the lives of each person you pass on the street, realizing that everyone is the main character in their own story, each living a life as vivid and complex as your own? That feeling has a name: “sonder.” Or maybe you’ve watched a thunderstorm roll in and felt a primal hunger for disaster, hoping it would shake up your life. That’s called “lachesism.” Or you were looking through old photos and felt a pang of nostalgia for a time you’ve never actually experienced. That’s “anemoia.” If you’ve never heard of these terms before, that’s because they didn’t exist until John Koenig set out to fill the gaps in our language of emotion. The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows “creates beautiful new words that we need but do not yet have,” says John Green, bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars. By turns poignant, relatable, and mind-bending, the definitions include whimsical etymologies drawn from languages around the world, interspersed with otherworldly collages and lyrical essays that explore forgotten corners of the human condition—from “astrophe,” the longing to explore beyond the planet Earth, to “zenosyne,” the sense that time keeps getting faster. The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is for anyone who enjoys a shift in perspective, pondering the ineffable feelings that make up our lives. With a gorgeous package and beautiful illustrations throughout, this is the perfect gift for creatives, word nerds, and human beings everywhere.

Download or read book The Joy of Small Things written by Hannah Jane Parkinson and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'This book is a not-so-small joy in itself.' NIGELLA LAWSON 'Parkinson has the gift of making you look with new eyes at everyday things. The perfect daily diversion.' JOJO MOYES 'Always funny and frank and full of insight, I absolutely love Parkinson's writing.' DAVID NICHOLLS 'I loved this book . . . Parkinson's writing transports you to unexpected places of joy and comfort . . . these pages contain happiness.' MARINA HYDE 'The twenty-first century feels a lot more bearable in Parkinson's company.' CHARLOTTE MENDELSON Drawn from the successful Guardian column, these everyday exultations and inspirations will get you through dismal days. Hannah Jane Parkinson is a specialist in savouring the small pleasures of life. She revels in her fluffy dressing gown ('like bathing in marshmallow'), finds calm in solo cinema trips, is charmed by the personalities of fonts ('you'll never see Comic Sans on a funeral notice'), celebrates pockets and gleefully abandons a book she isn't enjoying. Parkinson's everyday exaltations - selected from her immensely successful Guardian column - will utterly delight. FEATURES BRAND NEW MATERIAL 'A compendium of delights.' OBSERVER 'Delightful . . . a love letter to those little moments of bliss that get us through the daily grind.' RED

Download or read book Merriam Webster s Concise Dictionary of English Usage written by Merriam-Webster, Inc and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 820 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A handy guide to problems of confused or disputed usage based on the critically acclaimed Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage. Over 2,000 entries explain the background and basis of usage controversies and offer expert advice and recommendations.

Download or read book Landmarks written by Robert Macfarlane and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2015-03-05 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: SHORTLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE 2015 SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE 2016 Landmarks is Robert Macfarlane's joyous meditation on words, landscape and the relationship between the two. Words are grained into our landscapes, and landscapes are grained into our words. Landmarks is about the power of language to shape our sense of place. It is a field guide to the literature of nature, and a glossary containing thousands of remarkable words used in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales to describe land, nature and weather. Travelling from Cumbria to the Cairngorms, and exploring the landscapes of Roger Deakin, J. A. Baker, Nan Shepherd and others, Robert Macfarlane shows that language, well used, is a keen way of knowing landscape, and a vital means of coming to love it. Praise for Robert Macfarlane: 'He has a poet's eye and a prose style that will make many a novelist burn with envy' John Banville, Observer "I'll read anything Macfarlane writes" David Mitchell, Independent 'Every movement needs stars. In [Macfarlane] we surely have one, burning brighter with each book.' Telegraph '[Macfarlane] is a godfather of a cultural moment' Sunday Times

Download or read book Petrichor written by David Scott Ewers and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Petrichor" is a well-paced black comedy with hints of science fiction running through its interwoven storylines.

Download or read book The 100 Most Beautiful Words in English written by Robert Beard and published by . This book was released on 2009-10-08 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores what is beautiful in English words by looking closely at the 100 loveliest of them selected by Dr. Robert Beard, formerly Dr. Language at yourDictionary.com and currently Dr. Goodword at alphaDictionary.com. The book begins with an essay on what makes words beautiful and a background essay on the relationships between European and Indian languages. This is followed by essays that examine the pronunciation, meaning, usage, and history of words like cynosure, desultory, ephemeral, gambol, petrichor, serendipity, and Susquehanna. Each word is accompanied by creative examples featuring Beard's regular cast of characters, including Natalie Cladd, Maude Lynn Dresser, Gilda Lilly and the twins, Rita and Rhoda Book.

Download or read book The Smell of Fresh Rain written by Barney Shaw and published by Icon Books. This book was released on 2017-09-07 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Smell is the most emotional and evocative of our senses: it can bring back memories faster and with more immediacy than a photograph – so why is it so little understood? Armed with a hungry curiosity and a willingness to self-experiment, author Barney Shaw goes in search of the hidden meanings of smells. Using plain words to describe what he finds, he investigates the chemistry, psychology, history and future of this underappreciated sense. Journeying around boatyards, perfume shops and memories, Shaw opens your nose to the world, breaking down "chords" of smells into their component notes and through them revealing new ways of understanding the spaces through which we move. An investigation into the biology, psychology and history of smell, and a search for effective ways to put into words scents that we instantly relate to, but find strangely ineffable, THE SMELL OF FRESH RAIN includes a 200-entry thesaurus of succinct descriptions of common smells.

Download or read book Dictionary of the Strange Curious and Lovely written by Robin Devoe and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-03-12 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dictionary of English's 3500 most interesting and/or beautiful words. Many are obscure words -- this book is not useful for foreigners learning English, but best enjoyed by fluent or native speakers. A book for word-lovers who enjoy learning and appreciating more of the English language. Includes some poetical quotes showing usage and select etymologies.

Download or read book Revelations in Air written by Jude Stewart and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-10-26 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An extraordinary, strange, and startlingly beautiful exploration of smell, the least understood of our five senses The nose on your face is the Buckingham Palace Guard of your body, the maitre d' of all taste, as well as the seducer of your imagination, and memory—and Jude Stewart has charmed them all into a wicked, poetic and illuminating tour of their mysterious domains. —Jack Hitt, author of Bunch of Amateurs Overlapping with taste yet larger in scope, smell is the sense that comes closest to pure perception. Smell can collapse space and time, unlocking memories and transporting us to worlds both new and familiar. Yet as clearly as each of us can recognize different smells--the bright tang of citrus, freshly sharpened pencils, parched earth after rain--few of us understand how and why we smell. In Revelations in Air, Jude Stewart takes us on a fascinating journey into the weird and wonderful world of smell. Beginning with lessons on the incredible biology and history of how our noses work, Stewart teaches us how to use our noses like experts. Once we're properly equipped and ready to sniff, Stewart explores a range of smells—from lavender, cut grass and hot chocolate to cannabis and old books—using smell as a lens into art, history, science, and more. With an engaging colorful design and exercises for readers to refine their own skills, Revelations in Air goes beyond science or history or chemistry--it's a doorway into the surprising, pleasurable, and unfamiliar landscape of smell.

Download or read book The Happiness Passport written by Megan C Hayes and published by White Lion Publishing. This book was released on 2018-10-30 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the global dictionary, from common languages to obscure dialects, The Happiness Passport takes the reader on a joyful journey around the world seeking out the secrets of wellbeing. The wonderfully evocative words in this collection resonate with universal emotions: the deep longing for home conjured up by the Welsh word hiraeth, or the transportive ability of good storytelling captured in the Urdu goya. Yet at the same time each is deeply ingrained in its place of origin: long, dark Danish days encourage the warmth and cosiness of hygge, while the satisfied chatter after a sun-soaked meal - sombremesa - resonates uniquely with Spanish hospitality. These words are simultaneously all-inclusive and peculiar to place; they are on the tip of our tongue and yet not in our vocabulary. The Happiness Passport delves into this treasure trove of delights, examining the cultural context of each and the lessons that we can apply in our own lives to achieve greater contentment. A must-read for all those seeking a more balanced life, this beautiful guide features original illustrations that conjure up each elusive expression.

Download or read book Thunder Lightning written by Lauren Redniss and published by Random House. This book was released on 2015-10-27 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Note: This eBook file contains many richly detailed full-color images and makes use of unconventional page layouts. Because of this, readers will be required to zoom in on each page to read the text and see the finer detail of the artwork. [It has not been optimized for devices that display only in black and white.] From the National Book Award finalist Lauren Redniss, author of Radioactive, comes a dazzling fusion of storytelling, visual art, and reportage that grapples with weather in all its dimensions: its danger and its beauty, why it happens and what it means. WINNER OF THE PEN/E. O. WILSON LITERARY SCIENCE WRITING AWARD • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, KIRKUS REVIEWS, AND SHELF AWARENESS Weather is the very air we breathe—it shapes our daily lives and alters the course of history. In Thunder & Lightning, Lauren Redniss tells the story of weather and humankind through the ages. This wide-ranging work roams from the driest desert on earth to a frigid island in the Arctic, from the Biblical flood to the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Redniss visits the headquarters of the National Weather Service, recounts top-secret rainmaking operations during the Vietnam War, and examines the economic impact of disasters like Hurricane Katrina. Drawing on extensive research and countless interviews, she examines our own day and age, from our most personal decisions—Do I need an umbrella today?—to the awesome challenges we face with global climate change. Redniss produced each element of Thunder & Lightning: the text, the artwork, the covers, and every page in between. She created many of the images using the antiquated printmaking technique copper plate photogravure etching. She even designed the book’s typeface. The result is a book unlike any other: a spellbinding combination of storytelling, art, and science. Praise for Thunder & Lightning “[An] aesthetically charged and deeply researched account . . . a wild rainstorm of a book, pelting the reader with ideas and inspiration.”—Nature “A gorgeous and illuminating illustrated study of weather in all its tempestuous variety . . . Redniss’s combo of fact, folklore, and vibrant etched copperplate prints enthralls.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “Eerily beautiful . . . Contains plenty of scientific explanation (including more than a few nods toward global warming), but also far-flung personal stories that illuminate the beauty, wonder and chaos inherent in the elements.”—The New York Times “Magical . . . Redniss has . . . shown us how human beings live with nature—fighting, coexisting, taming, predicting via leech barometer and radar and intuition.”—The New York Times Book Review “[A] twenty-first-century genius . . . The reader willing to put herself fully in Redniss’s hands will be rewarded with a delicious feeling of being enveloped by a phenomenon that eclipses the chiming trivialities of daily life.”—Elle “Redniss is one of the most creative science writers of our time—her combination of beautiful artwork, reporting, and poetic prose brings science to life in ways that words alone simply cannot.”—Rebecca Skloot “Redniss combines her own dual punch of expressive art and impressive erudition to give an entirely new take on all that happens above our heads.”—Adam Gopnik “A strange and wonderful thing, the work of a first-class mind that refuses to submit to any categories or precedent.”—Dave Eggers

Download or read book The Dord the Diglot and an Avocado Or Two written by Anu Garg and published by Plume. This book was released on 2007 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the creator of the popular A.Word.A.Day e-mail newsletter A collection of some of the most interesting stories and fascinating origins behind more than 300 words, names, and terms by the founder of WordSmith.org. Did you know- There's a word for the pleasant smell that accompanies the first rain after a dry spell? Petrichor, combining petros (Greek for stone) and ichor(the fluid that flows in the veins of Greek gods). An illeistis one who refers to oneself in the third person. There's a word for feigning lack of interest in something while actually desiring it- accismus. For any aspiring deipnosophist(a good conversationalist at meals) or devoted Philomath(a lover of learning), this anthology of entertaining etymology is an ideal way to have fun while getting smarter.