'Yule' Love These New Books About Words

Rob Kyff
Tue, 18 Nov 2025 23:00:00 -0800
Lifestyle

Stuff your stockings this holiday season with these lively new books about language.

Jess Zafarris reveals the delightful backstories of hundreds of words in "Useless Etymology: Offbeat Word Origins for Curious Minds" (Chambers, $19.99). We learn that "sinister" once meant "left-handed" and that "factoid" originally denoted a falsehood masquerading as fact. Did you know that when William Shakespeare invented the word "bedroom" for "A Midsummer Night's Dream," it referred, not to a room WITH a bed, but to room IN a bed: "Then by your side no bed-room me deny"?

"She was all, like, angry at me for, like, using the word 'like.'" It's tempting to dismiss such "like"-laden sentences as vacuous or vapid. Not so fast. As Megan C. Reynolds explains in "Like: A History of the World's Most Hated (and Misunderstood) Word" (Harper Collins, $27.99), the much-maligned "like" actually plays many important roles as an emphasizer, clarifier and specifier — "a neon sign," she writes, "that directs the listener to what's important."
Updated: Wed Nov 19, 2025

Stuff your stockings this holiday season with these lively new books about language.

Jess Zafarris reveals the delightful backstories of hundreds of words in "Useless Etymology: Offbeat Word Origins for Curious Minds" (Chambers, $19.99). We learn that "sinister" once meant "left-handed" and that "factoid" originally denoted a falsehood masquerading as fact. Did you know that when William Shakespeare invented the word "bedroom" for "A Midsummer Night's Dream," it referred, not to a room WITH a bed, but to room IN a bed: "Then by your side no bed-room me deny"?

"She was all, like, angry at me for, like, using the word 'like.'" It's tempting to dismiss such "like"-laden sentences as vacuous or vapid. Not so fast. As Megan C. Reynolds explains in "Like: A History of the World's Most Hated (and Misunderstood) Word" (Harper Collins, $27.99), the much-maligned "like" actually plays many important roles as an emphasizer, clarifier and specifier — "a neon sign," she writes, "that directs the listener to what's important."

Call writer Stefan Fatsis "The George Plimpton of Dictionaries." Seeking to experience first-hand the mysterious process of dictionary-making, he signed on as a lexicographer-in-training at Merriam-Webster, where he participated in the meticulous but quirky craft of writing definitions and choosing which new words to add to the lexicon. His witty book "Unabridged: The Thrill of (and Threat to) the Modern Dictionary" (Atlantic Monthly Press; $30) provides us with an insider's look at those who curate and shape our language.

Joshua Blackburn takes us on a verbal joy ride in "The Language-Lover's Lexipedia: An A-Z of Linguistic Curiosities" (Avid Reader Press, $27.82). Its 138 entries include advertising slogans in Latin: "Age modo!" (Just do it!), "Adamas in aeternum." (A diamond is forever.); adjectives for animals: "orcine" (killer whale), "macropodine" (kangaroo); and oddball terms for colors in Elizabethan England, e.g., "dead Spaniard," "lusty gallant."

Mark Twain, Benjamin Franklin and Andrew Carnegie each launched quixotic efforts to simplify English spelling, e.g., "laf," "dawter," "tung." Spoiler alert: Their efforts flopped. Gabe Henry spins the fascinating stories of futile orthographic reform in "Enough Is Enuf: Our Failed Attempts to Make English Easier to Spell" (Dey Street Books, $28). Read this book and "ur" also going to learn that texting and tweeting have become "GR8" drivers of simplified spelling. Cya!