Charles Harrington Elster
NEWS FLASH!

St. Martin's Press has acquired the rights to publish Charlie's next two books, and of course Charlie is thrilled.

Click on Comments (above) for details.


Word Quiz

Do you know the companion word for misogynist — the word that means "a hater of men"? Click on Writings (above right) for the answer.

Now Get This . . .

Urgent message on the envelope of a piece of junk mail from Western Lending Corp.:

"Do Not Fold: Contains Your FREE Mercedes!"

Now that's what you might call "pushing the envelope."

From an ad on my email homepage:

"Destroy yellow teeth!"

I think I'll keep them for now, if you don't mind.

On a coupon for a San Diego restaurant:

"Pre Fixed Menu"

Even with the requisite hyphen (pre-fixed) this would be a gaffe. It's not the menu that's fixed beforehand; it's the price. The proper spelling is prix fixe (PREE FIKS), which comes to us from French.


Charlie's Latest

"Fun reading for verbomaniacs," says Booklist of What in the Word? Wordplay, Word Lore, and Answers to Your Peskiest Questions About Language. Click on Writings above to find out more.

Charlie's Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations is now even bigger! The second edition is fully updated and has nearly 200 new entries, including oft-mispronounced names like Niger, Pinochet, and Qatar. Click on Writings above to find out more.


Charlie's second vocabulary-building novel for high school students preparing to take the SAT or ACT is a time-travel comedy-adventure. Click on Writings above to find out more.

Charlie's
Quick Quotes


The Knickerbocker Rule for Writers: "Apply ass to chair."

"A man begins by fooling around with language, and at some point it becomes his life." — Patrick Cavanaugh

"Writing is at the mercy of the greatest number of amateurs—almost the entire population."
— Jacques Barzun

"It is better to gain the respect of readers than their admiration—better still . . . to gain their gratitude." — F. L. Lucas

Obsolete: No longer used by the timid. Said of words.
— Ambrose Bierce

Punctuation: A set of symbols that a writer uses to establish the rhythm of a piece, which an editor then uses to destroy it.
— C. H. Elster

Selected Works

Books
What in the Word? Wordplay, Word Lore, and Answers to Your Peskiest Questions About Language
The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations: The Complete Opinionated Guide for the Careful Speaker
Test of Time: A Novel Approach to the SAT and ACT
Tooth and Nail: A Novel Approach to the SAT
Verbal Advantage
There's A Word for It! A Grandiloquent Guide to Life
Articles
Seven Steps to Word Power
Timeless tips for aspiring vocabulary builders.
The Wrong Pro-NOUN-ciation
Charlie beats up on Merriam-Webster in the Boston Globe.
The Grandiloquent Gumshoe
At a loss for words? Read one of Charlie's guest "On Language" columns for The New York Times Magazine.
Things Are Against Us
Read Charlie's guest "On Language" piece about resistentialism.
Charlie's Dictionary Recommendations
Shopping for a new dictionary? Here's some sage advice.
Celling Out
Charlie's brave new words for a wireless world.
A Little Latin Is a Lovely Thing
Read one of Charlie's articles in SPELL/Binder.
Wordplay
Read a profile of Charlie in San Diego Home/Garden Lifestyles.
Letters
A Way with Words:
Charlie explains why he left the show.

Quick Links

WRITE TO CHARLIE
Read Charlie's May 2009 review of "Curiosities of Literature" in the Wall Street Journal.
Visit SPELL, a national organization of language lovers. Charlie is a vice president and columnist for their newsletter.
Find Authors

Welcome, Word Lovers!

You have landed at the website of writer, radio commentator, and lexicomane Charles Harrington Elster, a.k.a. the Grandiloquent Gumshoe. (If you're wondering what a lexicomane is, it's a lover of dictionaries.)

Bring up the subject of language and I'll talk your ear off. Hand me a dictionary and I'm lost in its pages for a week. Ask me to find an obscure word and I won't sleep until I track it down. I am an unrepentant, irremediable word nerd and proud of it, for language is the most pleasant obsession I know.

Day and night, weekday and weekend, I am drawn to the luminescent screen of my computer, there to wrestle with strand upon strand of sticky syntax. If you want to find me, listen for a bunched clamor of keystrokes. Look for a forehead furrowed from straining over where to place a comma or delete a word. Look for eyes gone blank from focusing too long on the cobwebs quivering in the corner of the ceiling. Look for a man seduced by the sound of syllables and caught in the web of words.

If you are a fellow woolgatherer in the world of words, or simply an inquisitive visitor searching for verbal entertainment or enlightenment, I invite you explore my website and learn more about my work.

The Grandiloquent Gumshoe scours the pages of the Oxford English Dictionary.

When I tell people I'm a writer and they ask what I write, my stock answer is, "I write about the English language for a general audience." In other words, I don't write textbooks and I don't write academic tomes. I write popular reference books for people who want to learn more words or learn more about words.

For many years I have also been a radio commentator, and for five and a half years I hosted a weekly public radio talk show on language called A Way with Words.

At the top of this page, click on Biography to find out more about me. Click on Writings to learn more about my books and articles. Click on Events for information on my book signings, speaking events, and radio interviews.

You're welcome to share your thoughts or post a question about language on my Comments page. If you would like to contact me directly or privately, click on WRITE TO CHARLIE in the "Quick Links" sidebar below.

Good words to you!


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The lexicomane with his first love, Webster's New International Dictionary, second edition, 1934.

Entire contents of this website
Copyright © 2005-2009 by Charles Harrington Elster.
All rights reserved.