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  • Published: 6 May 2010
  • ISBN: 9780141959597
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 256

Satisdiction

One Man's Journey Into All The Words He'll Ever Need



From Abluvion to Zyxt - the story of a year spent reading all twenty volumes of the OED (21,730 pages!)

Ammon Shea was ten when he first discovered the joy of reading a dictionary rather than using it to look a word up. Little did he imagine that one day he would spend over $1,000 and sacrifice an entire bookcase and a whole year to the twenty volumes that make up the king of all reference books: The Oxford English Dictionary.

It was a year that changed his life, not least when he fell in love with a lexicographer. In this hilarious, personal and fascinating book, with a chapter for each letter of the alphabet, Shea introduces us to hundreds of words he discovered that deserve to see the light of day again, and explains why. Want to know the word for the area on your back that you can't reach to scratch (acnestis)? Or the term for the smell of earth just after a rainstorm (petrichor)? Or perhaps you're just looking for the word to describe that feeling of saying enough (satisdiction). This book is all you need.

  • Published: 6 May 2010
  • ISBN: 9780141959597
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 256

About the author

Ammon Shea

Ammon Shea has been reading dictionaries since he was ten years old. Along the way he has supported this habit by being a street musician in Paris, a gondolier in San Diego, and a furniture mover in New York City. He is the author (with Peter Novobatzky) of two previous books about obscure words. He lives in New York with his girlfriend (a former lexicographer) and a large number of old dictionaries.

Also by Ammon Shea

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Praise for Satisdiction

Delightful . . . I doubt if a dictionary has ever had such love and attention lavished on it

Irish Times

Inspiring . . . Shea has walked the wildwood of our gnarled, ancient speech and returned singing incomprehensible sounds in a language that turns out to be our own

The New York Times

Drily humorous . . . Shea' s Infectious spirit shines through

Guardian