|
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!  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. |
