Get wordy for Halloween!

Word Catcher by Phil Cousineau

Stephen Turner, Milwaukee Books Examiner
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Would you like to be a "logodaedalus"? If so, you could do worse than Phil Cousineau’s 2010 book titled Word Catcher. The book is, as the sub-title puts it, an amusing and chrestomathic (useful) Odyssey Into the World of Weird and Wonderful Words.

Cousineau is a word lover, a man irremediably stricken with logophilia, a lexicographic-smitten collector of words and word lore, a man with a word hoard second to none. He catches and collects words, etymologies, and connections between words the way boys collect baseball cards. In his own words, a wordcatcher is “an alert reader who is always ready for the coruscating catch of a particularly beautiful, unusual, precise, or eye-opening word . . . [one] equally ready to throw it over to the next reader, a playful act that keeps the game of wordcatching going on, infinitely.”

The 250 or so words gathered in this book are all interesting, some because of what they mean, some because of where they come from, and some because of what they are connected to or what they have given rise to.

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Take the word "write," for example. It’s from the Old English writan, which meant “scratch.” ‘Look that [scratch] up and you’ll find “scratch” is a synonym for “money,” though writing for “scratch” has eluded many a writer trying to “scratch out a living.”’

Or how about the wondrous arachibutyrophobia? That’s the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth. It comes from the Greek arachi, glutinous oil present in peanut butter, plus butyro, to stick, plus phobia, fear. (Back story: phobia comes from “Phobos, son of Ares, god of terror, . . .”)

In addition to being a word lover, Cousineau is a man skilled in apophenia, the ability to make connections where none previously existed. He is also a witty and erudite writer, who makes this odyssey a truly enjoyable voyage. If you love words, you will love this book.

Rating for Word Catcher, by Phil Cousineau:

5
Related Topics

words
etymology
vocabulary
unusual words




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By Stephen Turner
Milwaukee Books Examiner
Stephen is a retired college English professor with a number of publications to my credit including numerous poems, short stories, articles, book...