For those who love the English language for its richness and sheer diversity of definitions, this is potentially the next best thing to reading the OED yourself: a compendium of obscure highlights from the great tome.
Just don't expect much of a story. The author pauses to reflect, muse, and meander frequently. Nonetheless, the highlights of Shea's book are the words and definitions themselves. For the author has exhaustively scanned the great tome looking for words that define things which he'd found particularly engrossing to himself. That is to say, Shea "collects words" a hobby which he describes as being "largely useless". That being so, it wasn't quite so useless, as he skilfully managed to develop his hobby into an enjoyable book for those who share his lexical passions. Thus sharing his love of obscure definitions, I repeatedly found myself delving back for more samplings of cherished rarities from the lexical arcanum.
Thus we find, e.g., "heterodogmatize: to have an opinion different from the one generally held". Once defined, he then attempts a little humour which admittedly (as Shea is no Ambrose Bierce) falls flat on its face more often than not: "Just because you are in proud possession of opinions which differ markedly from the majority...is no reason to start patting yourself of the back. Usually, it just means you are wrong." Well boom boom to that. That being said, his occasionally awkward attempts at humour are entirely forgiveable, insofar as he has produced a most commendable sampling of rare & obscure words whose definitions are usually amusing enough in themselves without Shea's 'help' to inject humour any further.
For lovers of the English language, who've not had sufficient time to browse the OED's entirety, this is a most worthwhile book. Albeit, please take my review with the caveat that many others would not warm to it as much as this reviewer did. For this book is certainly not one for anyone who holds a casual indifference towards their mother tongue.
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Spitzenrezensionen aus anderen Ländern
Mr. T. White
Here you'll find many obscure & forgotten gems, hidden deep within the OED
Kundenrezension aus Großbritannien 🇬🇧 am 2. Februar 2009
Elisa Barlow
Book itself is fantastic, printing quality abhorrent
Kundenrezension aus Kanada 🇨🇦 am 12. Februar 2019jack gibbs
Very interesting definations
Kundenrezension aus Kanada 🇨🇦 am 1. August 2020