Because you’re reading this, you’re not a member of the “booboise”–a middle-class ignoramous. That word (pronounced boob-wa-zee, and synthesizizing boob with bourgeous, was invented by the noted cynic H.L. Mencken, according to Dewdroppers, Waldos, and Slackers: A Decade-by-Decade Guide to the Vanishing Vocabulary of the Twentieth Century by Rosemarie Ostler.

Was that paragraph “orexigenic”?–did it whet your appetite (in this case, for more strange words)? Orexigenic is an entry in my favorite word book, Mrs. Byrne’s Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words by Josefa Heifetz Byrne (violin superstar Jascha Heiftez’s daughter).

If so, maybe you need a “pandect”–a book of everything. That one, I found in The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Words, by George Stone Saussy III.

There are dozens of books like this. Some, of course, are out of print, and you have to browse the shelves of musty old bookstores. And some are just too darned ponderous. But when you find a good one, it can provide hours of enjoyment.

Some ways to use them:

• Open and read a random page
• Build your vocabulary with a page per day
• Play a guess-the-definition game: one person reads the word aloud and spells it, the others write down their guess about what it means
• A variation: the reader writes down three or four definitions including the correct one, and the other players which is right–your own home version of the game they play on the NPR quiz shows
• Keep it in your bathroom, your home office, or your family room for the amusement and instruction of you and your visitors

This entry was posted on Friday, September 5th, 2008 at 1:54 pm and is filed under Frugal Fun. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.