Summer Reading: from OED to OMG by Rob Kyff on Creators.com

Recently

And Now for Some Trash Talk With the help of Mim Harrison's delightful book "Words at Work," let's go Dumpster diving and examine some jargon from the world of garbage collection ... er, "waste management." If you still think of a garbage truck in the …Read more. These Boots Were Made For… Two random dispatches from the Word Front... — Talking the Walk "I am a slow walker," Abraham Lincoln once said, "but I never walk back." If only today's politicians would follow honest Abe's example. Every day, it seems …Read more. What's the Scoop on 'Troop'? Q. What's up with the noun "troop"? The definition of this word as I learned it and as defined by Merriam-Webster is "a group of soldiers." Yet, so frequently these days, I hear or read lines such as "three troops were …Read more. A Child's Garden of 'Versus' Q. Last year, we had a foreign exchange student from Germany stay with our family. When he wanted to challenge our boys to a video game, he would say he wanted to "verse" them. I have never heard of that form of "versus" being …Read more.

Summer Reading: from OED to OMG

Summer — what better time to dip your toes into the refreshing stream of books about language? Here are some fascinating books for pool, porch or pond.

What do you get when you read a 20-volume dictionary that weighs 137 pounds? According to Ammon Shea's "Reading the OED" (Penguin, $21.95), headaches, eyestrain — and a remarkably rich and rewarding tour of human experience.

From "abluvion" (things washed away) to "zyxt" (to see), Shea zyxts hundreds of words, most of which are now abluvion but shouldn't be: "osculable" (able to be kissed), "ambidexter" (person who accepts bribes from both sides) and "mafflard" (a blundering fool).

In "Damp Squid — The English Language Laid Bare" (Oxford, $19.95), Jeremy Butterfield mines the vast collection of electronically held texts used to compile the OED and discovers hidden treasures: The word most frequently modified by "naked" is "eye," followed by "body"; and "blog," though only a few years old, has already spawned 214 derivatives, including "blogosphere," "bloggerati" and "blogstipation" (the blog equivalent of writer's block).

(As for the "damp squid" of the title, this term, meaning "disappointment," is a mis-rendering of "damp squib," a British term for a wet firecracker — a dud.)

Gen X'ers with iPod buds stuck into their ears might puzzle over the meaning of terms derived from phonograph records: "flip side," "like a broken record" and "in the groove." Ralph Keyes is here to help with "I Love It When You Talk Retro" (St.

Martin's, $25.95), which describes the origins of terms based on the technology, politics or culture of days gone by.

I never knew, for instance, that "doofus" is derived from "Dufus," a dimwitted character in the Popeye comic strip, or that the first "truth squad" was a group of Republicans who followed President Harry Truman as he campaigned for Adlai Stevenson in 1952.

Is texting a totally new phenomenon? Is its use restricted to the younger generation? Does it hinder literacy? No, no and no, says British linguist David Crystal in his fascinating book "txtng - the gr8 db8" (Oxford, $19.95).

After explaining why people text (it's fast and fun) and how they text - mostly using logographs (@), initialisms (OMG), emoticons (^_^), omitted letters (msg), nonstandard spellings (sorta) and shortenings (rad) — he concludes that texting reflects "the human ability to be linguistically creative and to adapt language to suit the demands of diverse settings."

Rob Kyff, a teacher and writer in West Hartford, Conn., invites your language sightings. Send your reports of misuse and abuse, as well as examples of good writing, via e-mail to Wordguy@aol.com or by regular mail to Rob Kyff, Creators Syndicate, 5777 W. Century Blvd., Suite 700, Los Angeles, CA 90045. To find out more about Rob Kyff and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.