BRYSON'S DICTIONARY OF TROUBLESOME WORDS; by Bill Bryson; Broadway Books, 241 pages; $19.95.
Talk about devoted fans. When a colleague heard I was reviewing the new Bill Bryson book, he threatened to resort to skulduggery to get the assignment for himself.
Thanks to Bryson I know (1) it's not skullduggery, since, "the word has nothing to do with the bony part of the head," and (2) it's a modified form of a word that "originally signified sexual misbehavior."
Well. Let's hope my co-worker was referring to the word's more modern definition, described in the beat-up old copy of Webster's dictionary that sits on my desk as "sneaky, dishonest behavior; trickery."
But really, who would want to turn to a traditional dictionary when Bryson, an American who worked as copy editor for the London Times before becoming a best-selling author, has put together "Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words"?
The book is actually an update of the one that launched his career in 1983, written while he was still at the newspaper, struggling with what he refers to in his introduction as the "vast expanses of English usage — linguistic Serengetis — that I was not clear about at all."
Some 60 percent of the material in the 2002 edition is new, although Bryson assures his readers he really hadn't learned that much more since the first edition of the book was published.
Like a dictionary or a style guide, this is not a book most of us would read from beginning to end. If you're not looking up a specific word or topic, it's more fun to just flip through the pages until a word catches your eye.
For example, the word exorbitant.
"Many writers, on both sides of the Atlantic, show a perplexing impulse to put an h into the word. . . . Inhexcusable." Fans of Bryson's dry but sometimes silly stabs at humor will immediately snicker at the h he's added to the word inexcusable.
(Note: If you aren't at least smiling after reading that definition, perhaps you should pick up one of Bryson's previous books about the English language, such as "Mother Tongue," instead. Or better yet, one of his books about his travels in America, Europe or Australia.)
In this new "Dictionary of Troublesome Words," don't expect too much of the trademark Bryson wit that made his other books, such as "In a Sunburned Country," about Australia, so popular. After all, this is a book that includes a punctuation appendix and a glossary of grammatical terms.
People who are interested in how words are used will be entertained by all the ways the language can be mangled, especially when Bryson cites examples of improper usage from such prominent publications as the New York Times.
Take the word "major," as in calling this book "a major undertaking." Bryson labels "major" a severely overworked word that "brings a kind of tofu quality to much writing, giving it bulk but little additional flavor."
No doubt that's not just an understatement, but, well, a major understatement.
E-mail: lisa@desnews.com