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The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten
by Jeffrey Kacirk
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Touchstone (2000-09-07)
ISBN: 0684857618
EAN: 9780684857619
Dewy Decimal #: 423.1
Paperback: 240 pages
SKU: BA08040510
Condition: Used: Very Good
Comments: Exactly as shown, Spine uncreased, Text clean with NO marks. Front cover lifts a bit.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
ENTER A GALLERY OF WIT AND WHIMSYAs the largest and most dynamic collection of words ever assembled, the English language continues to expand. But as hundreds of new words are added annually, older ones are sacrificed. Now from the author of Forgotten English comes a collection of fascinating archaic words and phrases, providing an enticing glimpse into the past. With beguiling period illustrations, The Word Museum offers up the marvelous oddities and peculiar enchantments of old and unusual words.
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Customer Reviews
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Lost words that should be found.
Rating  (4)
Date: 2007-12-20
Jeffrey Kacirk, The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten (Simon and Schuster, 2000)
A small, yet wonderful, dictionary of words that, for the most part, are no longer in use and probably should be. Other reviewers have pointed out that Kacirk could have done more with this, and they're correct, but I had no problems at all with what's here. The only real expectations I had coming into this were that I'd get the words and find out what they meant, and that's exactly what I got. It's better than your thesaurus. You need it. ****
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A brief comment
Rating  (2)
Date: 2007-04-19
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
This was a great idea for a book on English, but I agree with the earlier reviewer that the execution was poor. It's simply a list of archaic words with their definitions, but the problem with that is that the language of the definitions themselves is often archaic and difficult to understand, since the author uses the definitions of the original sources, many of which use other words and/or wording which are obscure or unintelligible to the modern reader. Many of the definitions are still deciperable but the overall value and usefulness of the book is greatly reduced by this limited approach. Fortunately I bought the Connect Reader ebook version of the volume for my Sony PRS500 Reader so I paid much less than the hard copy price, which makes the deal almost tolerable. To give the author some credit he does mention the original source, which is fine for the scholars out there who want to pursue the subject further, but not very useful for the rest of us. So unless you're already an accomplished English etymologist I recommend you pass this one by. I'm no authority in this area but I'm sure there are better books on historical etymology and lexicography out there.
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A word for every occasion
Rating (4)
Date: 2006-08-26
This book is a treasure trove for those of us interested in the obscure.
Even 'grammar-folk' (educated people) will be 'blutterbunged' (confounded, overcome by surprise).
Highly recommended for those of us who love what is obscure.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
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Nothing Faffle About It
Rating  (5)
Date: 2003-03-06
16 out of 16 customers found this reveiw helpful
Jeffrey Kacirk dedicates "The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Ever Forgotten" to Lewis Carroll because of the delectable verbiage introduced in "Jabberwocky." This seems right, as Kacirk's choice of words here are as fun, unique and rarely use Carroll's.
This is not an etymological study, but an comfortable overview of antiquated words.
He start off with 'abbey-lubber,' which is a pretentious loiterer in a religious house. I am unsure how I'll tastefully work this into a sentence next Sunday at church, but I am glad to have such a word in my quiver should the occasion arise.
Don't dismay if, while reading this, you feel you are seeing words new to you. Most of these words haven't escaped rare book rooms in 200 years. For example, we prefer, 'librarian' over 'bibliothecary' and children tend to choose 'sleepy' instead of 'Billy-wink.'
As Kacirk defines words, he slips in a number of woodcut illustrations, adding to the appeal. They are always somehow correlated with a word on that page.
Grab a glass of something cold, and thoughtfully stroke your 'ziff' (beard) while reading this in a 'zypthesary' (brewhouse). It may be 'faffle' (work occupied requiring much labor with non-commensurate results), but maybe not.
I enjoyed "The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Ever Forgotten" by Jeffrey Kacirk.
Anthony Trendl
editor, HungarianBookstore.com
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Far far less than it could have or should have been
Rating  (1)
Date: 2002-01-19
16 out of 20 customers found this reveiw helpful
Jeffrey Kacirk's "The Word Museum" piqued my interest just by its basic promise, a book about words and their antiquated meanings. It sounds like a very good idea. Unfortunately, Kacirk botched the execution of it and what resulted was a very subpar and mostly uninteresting collection of word definitions. That's it, just definitions. The worst part is, usage dates (dates the words might have been in use) contextual quotes and word origins weren't even included. Well, actually, usage dates were included, by way of the name of an author who used it, that you had to go and look up in a glossary at the back of the book. Talk about unnecessarily cludgy and annoying. Ok, the origin of words is a bit complex to research for a book, but the other two shouldn't have been that difficult. Had Kacirk actually put the usage dates along with the definitions, and included a contextual quote (most of the authors were before 1900 so copyrights wouldn't be an issue), this book would have been far more interesting and worth spending money on.
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