4 out of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

I am a big fan of books on language. If you like books on the origins of the words that we use every day, or learning about phrases that have vanished from our regular usage then you cannot go wrong with a book by Paul Anthony Jones.

I have liked all the books of his that I have read previously and can happily add this one to the list of books I have enjoyed. This collection of words has been harvested from his excellent Twitter feed, @HaggardHawks. A lot of the content is the tweets replicated, such as learning what is bookstave is or discovering the original definition for bumfuzzle.

The advantage that the book has over Twitter is that he has the opportunity to expand some of the entries. For example the faintly ridiculous word, whangdoodle has a long explanation of its origins and which Sunday in the year is called Quasimodo day. It is a good way of changing the pace of the book from just reading the brief language gems. Can recommend this if you like filling your mind with random facts to repeat to friends and family.

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