If you love language and learning than this is a book for you. There are so many seldom used and "forgotten" words in English that we all need to learn and perhaps remember. This small collection of these words is a great way to start an exploration into the countless "lost" words that are treasures that need to be uncovered and restored to common usage.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

I did not enjoy this book and so marked it as "did not finish" on Goodreads. It was hard to read in this format and was not what I expected.

I received a copy of this ebook in exchange for an honest review
This was so fascinating! I have a special obsession with Linguistic curiosities and this definitely hit some marks that I had never encountered before! Quite amazing!

I love reading random facts. I also have a fascination with the English language. The Cabinet of Linguistic Curiosities is filled with forgotten words which lead to an explanation of the origin of the words themselves. There is an entry for every day of the year. I actually read this as a book which I definitely do not recommend as it gets a bit dry but reading one entry per corresponding day would be a lot of fun. I am actually reading it again that way. It would definitely be a fun and welcome present for anyone who likes random facts and learning about obscure words.

This was so fun and interesting! Linguistics is a fascinating topic so I was really excited to read this book. It's set up so you have one word for every day of the year. I loved getting a little bit of historical info to go with each word and a bit of culture, as well.

For Word Nerds and Other Language Lovers

If you are a word nerd, this is the book for you. It has 365 unusual words and a little about them. There is a decidedly UK bent to this book, including a word derived from the Celtic language of Manx or a rare one used by Tolkien; within the descriptions of the words, sometimes the author refers to something in British culture. Quite often, the author also shares bonus words that are related to a particular daily linguistic curiosity. It is certainly a book to take in small doses, and one per day is just about right.

I received a complimentary copy of this title from the publisher through NetGalley. Opinions expressed are my own.

I LOVE books like this. I like having something to start the day with and I love that it was words! Great choices and so much fun!

This is the perfect book for any word nerd. I breezed through it rather quickly and it was a total delight. Definitely one I would recommend as a gift.

A great book for those who love words. Would be a perfect gift for any wordsmith or to keep as a coffee table book. A charming title to add to any collection.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. Thank you NetGalley.


this book was interesting and fun. It's ultimately a great choice for fellow word nerds.

buy it, keep it, love it!

Linguistics is fascinating, even if it's not my area of expertise in anthropology. As a writer and poet, I love language and playing with words! Learning words lost to time is fun, and Jones' A Cabinet of Linguistic Curiosities didn't disappoint. There's a word for each day of the year, with a bit about how it entered the language, and a little trivia story that applies to said word. I learned so many new words, now squirreled away for later use in my own writing. I loved learning the bits of history too. So many things I didn't know. Sometimes it can be quite humbling to think about the weight of time and history, of all that's come before, and faded into obscurity. To think, some day linguists, and other curious folk will be looking back on our time, pondering words lost, or mutated, conjuring images of an era long lost with snapshots of history.

Among the words I learned were esculate, esculation, and luscition, all of which refer to closing or blinding an eye, or being purblind. I'm missing an eye, so these were all very relevant. The story accompanying esculate is an apocryphal legend about the famous Admiral Nelson putting a telescope to his blind eye and saying he didn't see the signal to retreat.

Then there was arsefeet, a colloquial term used to describe a penguin. Agerasia refers to looking younger than actual age. That trivia bite discussed the first use of the abbreviation OMG. It was 1917. Wow!This book is perfect for word lovers, and those who enjoy trivia! Well worth the read.

***Many thanks to the Netgalley & University of Chicago Press for providing an egalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

This book is great fun! Who doesn't love being able to pull out an unusual antiquated word now and then? Plus unusual events and occurrences for every day of the year to go with the words! You'll learn new things and have fun doing it. A perfect gift for anyone!

#CabinetOfLinguisticCuriosities #NetGalley

I received an advance digital copy of this book from the author, publisher and Netgalley.com.
The opinions expressed in this review are my own.

The Cabinet of Linguistic Curiosities is a word lovers delight. A great book for English majors and grammar nerds.

5 out of 5 stars. Highly recommended.

It is important to note that this book is presented as a daily calendar of forgotten words, and so it was probably never meant to be read in large doses. Even so, while this book is meant to be consumed daily, but unless the physical format is very different from the version I'm reading it probably isn't especially well-suited for it. I'm put in mind of those word-a-day bathroom calendars, which are generally cumbersome objects at the beginning of the year, but tend to get pared down as the year progresses and pages are torn away. I doubt that the physical version of this book allows for easy tearaways or is spiral bound so that it is at least easy to keep one's place.

I read this book over the course of five days and thus did not really view it in its best light, since doing so amounted to reading a somewhat peripatetic dictionary. (No, peripatetic is not a word I learned from this book.) Anyway, as a dictionary its value is only so-so. Many of the entries are pretty extreme digressions from discussion of the words themselves, although sometimes they are tangentially related, and it could use regular pronunciation keys. What fun is using new words if you don't also learn how to say them? That is how you end up describing something as the "epee-tome of aw-ree" and feeling really stupid when someone says "Do you mean 'epitome of awry'?"

Even lacking pronunciation guides, Jones has selected good words, especially if one is writing a period piece and wishes to have characters demonstrating a particular pattern of speech. Furthermore, there are often "bonus" words in the entry text beyond the definition. Helpfully, there is an alphabetical "wordfinder" at the very end of the text, though this does not include definitions, only the pages on which the words may be found, and only the words which were the main entries. In other words, it does not encompass the "bonus" words many entries include, which is fine if you remember to which word the bonus words were tangentially related, but if not...good luck!

This isn't likely to be a book that is kept and treasured after the first reading, and that's fine. Novelty books make great gifts. And this is the sort of book that works well in a basket by the loo or in a library or as a gift to an English major, who will probably eventually put it in a basket by the loo or donate it to a library or re-gift it to some other English major.

The Cabinet of Linguistic Curiosities was such a fun and interesting read. This book blends language, culture, and history to explain the origins behind quirky, obscure words that correspond to a day (think "word of the day" calendars). Some of my new favorite words to add to my vernacular:

- mrkgnao (n.) the meow of a cat
So now when I sing "Old MacDonald Had A Farm", the cows go "moo", the pigs go "oink", and the cats go "mrkgnao" but I wonder... what does the fox say?

- theic (n.) an excessive tea drinker
A British slang term that describes my lifestyle.

- smoot (n.) a unit of length equal to five feet, seven inches
Alas, I am 5 inches too short to be a full smoot tall but..
The Great Wall of China is approximately 3,678 smoots long
The Eiffel Tower is about 190 smoots tall
The Empire State Building is roughly 223.9 smoots tall

- arsefoot (n.) a penguin; any squat, short-statured waterbird
I found this hilarious one and imagined a scenario in which a scientist is studying penguins when all of a sudden, a penguin bites the scientist and leads to the scientist scientifically classifying it as an "arsefoot" as revenge

What a fun way to learn new words and spice up your everyday conversations.

*Thank you to NetGalley and University of Chicago Press publishers for providing a free ARC

Fun to keep on hand when I want to read something that doesn't require a long commitment. I can read a story or two about a phrase/word and move on. Perfect waiting room reading.

The Cabinet of Linguistic Curiosities - A year of fun that you can go back to time and time again.

This is the perfect gift for any curious lover of words! Paul Anthony Jones defines one unusual word for each day of the year. Plus historical background of the words makes The Cabinet of Linguistic Curiosities even more fun to read.

This book is sure to be a topic of conversation and a source of entertainment for the whole year. Buy two, one for yourself and one to gift!

What a fun read! This is a book you may want to read in the company of others; I know that often I found myself reading a passage aloud to whoever was in the same room. There are passages that are amusing, some more serious but all are informative and entertaining. This is a great book for those who enjoy trivia, little known odd facts, words and their history as well as people who like just like knowing something other people don't.

I read this on my Kindle and I noticed that while each passage was separated by a couple of empty lines and there was a picture of a key, the date was not listed at the beginning of each entry. It was often buried in the passage but I didn't always know which day I was reading about until I came upon in the passage itself. I was reading the book from the first page through to the end. This would have been a bigger issue had I wanted to look up and read a particular day. I don't know if this is something I would have encountered had I been reading a print copy.

The Cabinet of Linguistic Curiosities is a collection of obsolete etymological weirdness, linguistic dead ends, and other fascinating features of the English language. Due out 14th Oct 2019 from the University of Chicago press, it's 384 pages and will be available in hardcover, paperback, and ebook formats.

I'm a self avowed word nerd. I love language and the way it has shaped (and been shaped by) human culture and interaction. This book was a gold mine of interesting tidbits of which I was previously unaware. The format of the book is simple. It's set up in a 'word a day' calendar format with a word and some of its etymology related in a conversational and informal short essay of roughly 1-2 pages. I was truly impressed with how few of these words were previously known to me. There are worthy words here and a fair bit of related linguistic history.

The book also includes an alphabetical word list of the included words and a short bibliography (several of which are now on my to-be-read pile).

I enjoyed the book, loved the format, and think this would make a really superlative holiday gift for anyone with an appreciation for linguistics as well as a cracking addition to the home (or public) library.

Five stars, a truly fun book.

Interesting book for the linguistically-inclined

I liked this book especially the way that the author tied an event to a date to an archaic word. However in most cases the words were so obscure that they had little relevance. But reading a page a day should be interesting enough but this is not a book to be read straight through. As this is what was intended, I am giving this book a recommendation for people fascinated by language.