1234 Wacky, Witty and Wonderful Words

Words are precious things. They are the tools that we use to express our ideas, to communicate, and studies show that people who are fluent and articulate with words are perceived as more intelligent and are more successful in their chosen careers. My name is Paul Sloane, and together with my co-author Des McHale, we have written a book of wonderful words, remarkable words, unusual words. And if you read this book, you will learn new words that will impress your friends, but that's not the main reason to read the book. The reason you'll like the book is because it's great fun. The book is called 1,234 Wacky, Witty and Wonderful Words by Paul Sloane and Des McHale, and what we've done is we've collected some of the most interesting, fascinating, intriguing words that we can find and put them together in this book. And these include common words with unusual explanations as to where they come from or some aspect of them, unusual words that you've never heard of before but you might want to use in the future, words with strange properties, and we've thrown in some facetious words that we hope you'll like. So, did you know, for example, that the word companion means somebody you eat bread with? It comes from the Latin, cum, with, panis, bread. Bread, or that avocado comes from an Aztec language, Nahuatl, where it means the fruit avocado, but it also means testicle. Journey is a French word from the word journée, a day, and it used to mean the distance that you could walk in a day. Ultra crepidate is a word you probably don't know, but it's a marvellous word, a beautiful word, and it means to criticize beyond your sphere of expertise, beyond your level of knowledge, but literally it means beyond the sandal, and it comes from the story of a Roman painter, Apelles, who painted a picture and a cobbler came along and criticized the sandal, and then he went on to criticize the leg of the person who was painted, and Apelles said, well, it's all right for him to criticize the sandal because he knows about that, but he should not go beyond the sandal. And ultra crepidate means going beyond the sandal or criticizing beyond your fit sphere of expertise. Stressed is an unusual word, it's the longest word which spells another word when it's spelt backwards, desserts. And I said that we put in some humorous elements, well, hiya, Cynth, that's what you say whenever you see Cynthia. The book is 1,234 Wacky, Witty and Wonderful Words, it's available as a Kindle or as a hardcopy book from Amazon. I think you'll really enjoy it. It's a lot of fun, and if you do buy a copy, you'll be helping a very good cause because a portion of the royalties go to support Step by Step, a charity which helps disadvantaged young people.