The Dord, the Diglot, and an Avocado or Two contains short biographies of hundreds of words, both commonplace and unusual, new and old.
It's a perfect toilet tank book. Flipping through it, I found out there's a word for a self-destructive belief I've been suffering with in silence my entire life — resistentialism: "The theory that inanimate objects demonstrate hostile behavior towards us." (Here's the Wikipedia entry on resistentialism.)
Did you know:
There's a word for the pleasant smell that accompanies the first rain after a dry spell? Petrichor, combining petros (Greek for stone) and ichor (the fluid that flows in the veins of Greek gods).
An illeist is one who refers to oneself in the third person.
There's a word for feigning lack of interest in something while actually desiring it: accismus.
For any aspiring deipnosophist (a good conversationalist at meals) or devoted Philomath (a lover of learning), this anthology of entertaining etymology is an ideal way to have fun while getting smarter.
