Wordwatching: One Man's Quest for Linguistic Immortality

About this book

One mans quest to coin a new word. If bootylicious can get in the dictionary . . . Alex Horne loves words. He loves them so much in fact that he decided to invent his ownto create a brand new verbal concept and successfully implant it into the English language and the Oxford English Dictionary. But breaking into the dictionary was going to take more than just a gentle word in the ear of the OEDs editor as Alex soon discovered. Evidence was requiredAlex needed proof that his word was in print and used by more people than just him and his mom. He needed to use the dictionarys word a "corpus" of examples so a corpus he resolved to create. And he gave himself 1 000 days in which to do it. This is the story of what happened next. Did Alex get a word in the OED? What is a pratdigger? Are you already using one of Alexs words without realizing it? You wont regret spending your hard-earned honk on this hugely entertaining book full of wordy trivia and funny tales of verbal invention.