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

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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.