Continuing the description of books on the list given in post 1, which you’ll find here. Post 2 is here, and post 3 here.

Book 3: A Miscellany for Word Lovers

On with the info.

Paperback, pages 214. It was published by How To Books in 2014. Original cost £7.99, and currently available at £5.61. This was a present to me.

The book consists mainly of short quizzes where words are defined in a type of list and below this is given a short clue to each and the reader is expected to supply the word(s) defined. (Answers are given on the following page).

Here’s a brief sample taken from a page headed ‘The Law of the Land’ with a list of 10 words. I’ve given only the first 3 here:

A         Public defamation in writing or in some other permanent form that unjustifiably injures somebody’s reputation.

B         Public defamation in speech or some other non-permanent form that unjustifiably injures somebody’s reputation.

C         A court order that prohibits somebody from taking a specified action.

And the clues for these:

A         5 letter: l….

B         7 letters: s……

C         10 letters: inj…….

I’ll let you work out the answers.

Interspersed with the quizzes are short articles on words. Many of these give the background to one of the words in a list. Others deal with various facts relating to words, such as: The Secret Language of Savile Row, The Menacing World of Orwell’s Newspeak, Signs of the Times; The Sixties (1960-69) etc.

This is a book for dipping into, a frivolous chance to learn odd facts about words. Just good clean fun for those who love words, hence the title. Enjoy!

Students learning the English Language will find a useful site on pronunciation here. And there’s a friendly group on Facebook, which you’ll find here.