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• Michael Quinion's Witty Explorations •

After graduating from Cambridge, where he studied physical sciences, Michael Quinion became a studio manager at the BBC. He started a radio station in Brighton, ran an audio-visual marketing company, served as curator to the Cider Museum in Hereford (where he wrote two books on cider).

For the past decade Mr. Quinion has been an advisor to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). He wrote much of the second edition of the Oxford Dictionary of New Words. He is perhaps best known as writer and editor of the email newsletter and website, World Wide Words, which provide explanations for the idiosyncrasies and oddities of English.

Quinion's dictionary of affixes, Ologies and Isms, was published by the Oxford University Press in August 2002. His next, Port Out, Starboard Home: And Other Language Myths, was published in the UK by Penguin Books in 2004 and made the British best-seller lists. Ballyhoo, Buckaroo, and Spuds, has been published by the Smithsonian Institution Press and is now in paperback by HarperCollins. In October 2006, his Gallimaufry, about words that are vanishing from the language, was published by the Oxford University Press.

Now you enjoy all these great books and help support alphaDictionary at the same time.

Ballyhoo, Buckaroo, and Spuds
Ingenious Tales of Words and Their Origins
by Michael Quinion
$12.95 (explore Powell's for a lower price)

The cat's pajamas, the bee's knees, and the whole nine yards rolled into one, this true feast for wordlovers delightfully skewers commonly accepted word origin myths and etymological folk tales. The real story of a world or phrase's origin and evolution is often much stranger--and much more humorous--than the commonly accepted one; the many entries will certainly leave you happy as a clam. Happy as a clam? Really--what's so happy about being a clam? The saying makes much more sense when it's paired with its missing second half: at high water. Now a clam at high water is a safe clam, and thus a happy clam. The confusion surrounding the word kangaroo caused so much trouble that the Aborigines thought this English word meant any edible animal; they asked whether the cattle being unloaded from ships were kangaroos. From the bawdy to the sublime, Quinion's explanations and delightful asides truly prove that the proof is in the pudding.

Gallimaufry
A Hodge-Podge of Words Vanishing from Our Vocabulary
by Michael Quinion
$25.00 (explore Powell's for a lower price)

When did you last hear someone refer to the wireless? What was the original paraphernalia? Would you wear a billycock? Language is always changing, and in Gallimaufry: A Hodge-Podge of Words Vanishing from Our Vocabulary Michael Quinion has gathered together some fascinating examples of words and meanings which have vanished from our language. Sometimes a word is lost when the thing it describes becomes obsolete, sometimes it survives in a figurative sense while the original meaning is lost, and sometimes it simply gives way to a more popular alternative. The story of these and many other words opens a window into the lives of past speakers of the English language.

Port Out, Starboard Home
by Michael Quinion
$21.22 (explore Powell's for a lower price)

This book is a fascinating new look at the history of words and expression from all over the English speaking world. It rxplores idiomatic expressions such as 'cold shoulder' and 'dressed to the nines' and examines the origins of the 'honeymoon' while also dispelling well-worn urban myths like the purported origin of the word posh from the phrase "port out, starboard home".