LEWISBURG, Pa., Feb. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- The Lexiteria has announced the publication of The 100 Funniest Words in English by Dr. Robert Beard, AKA Dr. Goodword on the alphaDictionary.com website. This book examines what Dr. Beard considers the funniest of the 2500 words he has described and e-mailed daily to 200,000 people over the past 8 years.
After a short essay on what makes words funny, Dr. Beard examines the pronunciation, meaning, usage, and history of each funny word, giving several creative examples of its use. Dr. Beard's selection of the funniest words includes the likes of "absquatulate," "bowyangs," "collywobbles," "gongoozle," "hemidemisemiquaver," and "snollygoster."
"This was what I was born to do," Dr. Beard said in connection with the publication of his first trade book. "After 40 years of scientific research in the workings of words, I finally felt that I was ready to take my thoughts and ideas to a world-wide general audience."
Dr. Beard taught Russian language and Linguistics at Bucknell University for 35 years after completing his PhD in linguistics at the University of Michigan in 1966. "I feel that teaching linguistics at an introductory level for all those years put me in a position to talk about the intricacies of words on an authoritative but jovial level anyone can understand and enjoy," he added.
The book not only discusses funny words, it does so in a funny style. The examples given for each word rely on a cast of characters developed by Dr. Beard in the alphaDictionary "So, What's the Good Word?" series. They include the lady's man Phil Anders, Robin Banks (who works for the accounting firm of Cooke, Books & Hyde), a clothes horse, Maude Lynn Dresser, her friend, Lucinda Head, not to mention their overly expensive lawyer, Susan Liddy-Gates.
The book is available now in paperback and in electronic form on line at Amazon.com in the US and UK, as well as at the websites of Alibris and AbeBooks. Lexiteria promises a sequel to The 100 Funniest Words in English titled The 100 Most Beautiful Words in English later this year.
