The endangered English dictionary : bodacious words your dictionary forgot : an exotic, enlightening, and entertaining companion reference to your trusty Webster's

"Like animals, plants and book reviewers, words can become extinct, but Grambs is here to salvage the most missed of the lexical dinosaurs."—Patricia Holt, San Francisco Chronicle We often hear about the richness of the English language, how many more words it contains than French or German. And yet modern desk dictionaries are the result of a paring away of that glory, so that merely standard, functional, current words remain. The price we pay for such convenience is the thousands of delightful words we never see or hear. This book is an effort to save some of those words applicable to everyday life and countless word games from extinction. The resultant treasure trove of exotic verbal creatures is an indispensable resource for every lover of language. Modern dictionaries, the kind most people use, are often the result of a ruthless paring away of many glorious words--so that only the standard, functional, current ones remain. A treasure by every lover of language, this volume reclaims past glories of the language, presenting magnificent words that have the scent of generations and societies past