For a third, Random House has dropped the word count of big dictionaries to 260,000 from an average of 400,000. Thus it may qualify as the first heavyweight dictionary truly designed for ordinary ...

A founding member of the Royal Geographical Society in 1830, he spent much of his free time engaged in scientific pursuits. One of his final projects was this 'word-book' of nautical terminology, ...

These few instances of pontification aside, the rest of the book is a fun read, and definitely an informative one, telling us about the origin of many a word. In one instance, Tharoor tells us abo ...