Chrysti The Wordsmith: Weird & Wonderful Words - 1

Greetings and welcome to Christie the wordsmith from Montana State University in Bozeman. Finding a truly weird and wonderful word is like meeting a gorgeous person who is also a good cook and will help you move. Erin McKean wrote this in the introduction to her book weird and wonderful words. The title gives a pretty good sense of the contents but if you need further clarification I'll quote from the cover blurb. Weird and wonderful words is a potpourri a Selma Gundy of colorful and strange words featuring hundreds of entries guaranteed to amuse and astonish. This is a book for armchair linguists everywhere. Erin McKean senior editor of The Oxford University Press North American dictionary program and obviously a verb of war as well published weird and wonderful words. In 2003 in addition to containing a rich sampling of linguistic strangeness the book is weirdly and wonderfully illustrated by Roz Chast staff cartoonist for The New Yorker magazine. During the next two wordsmith additions will be sampling some of the lexical oddities from the

pages of Aaron McKeon's unusual book. And here's a bird's eye view of some of the upcoming terms scope pan dequeue lation mammal threat and Tor shrews panic. Join me next time for a sampling of Aran McKean's dictionary weird and wonderful words published by Oxford University Press. Ask for the title at your bookstore or enter it in your search engine. I'm Christie the wordsmith. CHRISTIE The wordsmith a sponsored by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Zoot enterprises a high tech firm in Bozeman Montana offering challenging careers and innovative solutions for the financial services industry sued web dot com.