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If you’re tired of using only ordinary, everyday words, you might want to check out “Totally Weird and Wonderful Words” (Oxford, $14.95 paperback).
Editor Erin McKean’s A-to-Z compendium of hundreds of out-of-the-ordinary words and their definitions will not only help you dress up your vocabulary, but might even turn heads at a cocktail party and raise eyebrows on the elevator.
Here are five from the book to get you started:
•Eagre. One might be eager to learn that this word means “a wave of unusual height, especially a tidal wave up a narrow estuary. The origin remains unknown.”
•Heterography. Spelled correctly here, it’s “an obsolete and rare word meaning ‘incorrect spelling.”’
•Oligosyllable. “A word of fewer than four syllables” — one of which, curiously, “oligosyllable” is not.
•Varve. “A pair of thin layers of clay and silt of contrasting color and texture that represent the deposit of a single year (summer and winter) in a lake at some time in the past. …” (“Varve” is sure to add verve to your vocabulary.)
•Wurp. “An obsolete word meaning ‘a stone’s throw.”’