Harmless Crank Reads the OED

Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages (2008)
by Ammon Shea

We must be grateful Ammon Shea has restricted his crazy antics to reading the Oxford English Dictionary.

What if he'd decided to take a hammer and swing it at every third person he encountered on the street! Now that would be really crazy.

Still, Ammon Shea’s Reading the OED is a bizarre labor of love.

In a rare moment of sanity, the author writes: “One would have to be mad to seriously consider such an undertaking.” We agree!

In all, Reading the OED contains 26 chapters, one for each alphabet. Each chapter begins with a delightful essay.

The author writes in a jaunty style and some readers might find the essays amusing.

This is a book filled with esoteric words, i.e., words you and I have never come across. At one point, the author himself confesses (p.191) that he picked up “a considerable amount” of useless information in reading the OED.

But, in a huge black mark, we do not get either the pronunciation or examples of usage.

The author is also too lazy to include an index at the end.

Here’s a small sample of interesting words I picked up from Reading the OED (examples are mine):

• misdelight: pleasure in something wrong
  Example: Jacob takes misdelight in Frankie's failures.
• philodox: a person who loves his own opinion
  Example: Bertie can tolerate anyone but a philodox.
• postreme: last, hindmost
  Example: Little Jacob is so used to being postreme that he doesn’t even cry at being last.
• gobemouche: one who believes anything
  Example: Harish Gowda is such a gobemouche that he believes cats in Jharkhand can fly.
• Misclad: inappropriately dressed
  Example: Sharmila wore a nine-yards saree to the night club!
• agelastic: a person who never laughs
  Example: Perhaps agelastic people have faced great trials in their lives.
• Unbepissed: Not having been urinated upon
  Example: With four young nephews and three nieces, Gopal’s claim of being unbepissed was surely a lie.
• mafflard: a stuttering or blundering fool
  Example: Children with speech impediments are often bullied as mafflards.
• engouement: irrational fondness
  Example: Binod hates movies, but his engouement for Bollywood songs mystifies me.
• countercozen: cheats in return
  Example: When Ramesh duped Senthil, he did not expect Senthil’s sister to countercozen him a few days later.
• quomodocunquize: make money in any way possible
  Example: A lot of businessmen are good at quomodocunquizing.
• redamancy: reciprocal love
  Example: Redamancy is not necessary for an enduring marriage.
• balter: dance clumsily
  Example: The moment I switch on the Final Countdown track, my kid brother starts to balter.
• bouffage: satisfying meal
  Example: We enjoyed a bouffage at the Delhi Darbar restaurant.
• unlove: stop loving a person
  Example: What if Romeo had suddenly unloved Juliet!
• lant: Adding piss to beer to fortify it
  Example: It was not uncommon for British pubs to lant beers in the past.
• vocabularian: One obsessed with words
  Example: It’s rare to encounter vocabularians in today’s world.
• gound: dirt that collects in the corner of eyes
  Example: It’s best to get gound out while showering.
• bed-swerver: unfaithful spouse
  Example: A frequent cause of divorce is bed-swerving by one or both partners.
• solivagant: a person who wanders about alone
  Example: I would not mistake Raju for a solivagant since he’s a chatterbox.

If you’re looking to improve your vocabulary, I’d recommend you order your copy of Reading the OED by Ammon Shea. A new copy costs around $5 (Kindle version).