The Horologicon: A Day's Jaunt Through the Lost Words of the English Language

Description

A 'delightfully eccentric' (Daily Mail) day in the life of unusual, beautiful and forgotten English words. The Horologicon (or book of hours) gives you the most extraordinary words in the English language, arranged according to the hour of the day when you really need them. Do you wake up feeling rough? Then you re philogrobolized. Pretending to work? That's fudgelling, which may lead to rizzling if you feel sleepy after lunch, though by dinner time you will have become a sparkling deipnosophist. From Mark Forsyth, author of the bestselling The Etymologicon, this is a book of weird words for familiar situations. From ante-jentacular to snudge by way of quafftide and wamblecropt, at last you can say, with utter accuracy, exactly what you mean.

Born in London in 1977, Mark Forsyth (a.k.a The Inky Fool) was given a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary as a christening present and has never looked back. His book The Etymologicon was a Sunday Times No. 1 Bestseller, and his TED Talk 'What's a snollygoster?' has had more than half a million views. He has also written a specially commissioned essay 'The Unknown Unknown: Bookshops and the Delight of Not Getting What You Wanted' for Independent Booksellers Week and the introduction for the new edition of the Collins English Dictionary. He lives in London with his dictionaries, and blogs at blog.inkyfool.com.

A delightfully eccentric ... illuminating new book. -- Daily Mail Whether you are out on the pickaroon or ogo-pogoing for a bellibone, The Horologicon is a lexical lamppost. -- The Field Reading The Horologicon in one sitting is very tempting. -- Roland White * Sunday Times *