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VIVIAN Cook is a man of many words. They are his bread and butter and also his liquid refreshment. Check YouTube for his witty, wine-orientated promotion for his latest book, It's All In A Word.
For word lovers - and there must be a word for them - the book is a fascinating, funny and, ironically, at times sobering wallow in the intricacies of the English language.
It is sobering because there are two chapters called How Many Words Do You Know? The first, testing for basic words, takes you up to the 20,000 mark. The advanced chapter sorts out those who can ascend to the dizzy summit of 150,000 by knowing the word to describe an African freshwater fish often found in aquariums, a baby that still lives primarily on milk and a million-millionth of a second.
Having prided myself - complacently, as it transpired - on a decent vocabulary, I foundered in the foothills.
This is a useful book and a fun book. It is also very revealing. Its 121 little chapters include an expos of 'BlairSpeak', showing how the former Prime Minister trod a linguistic minefield in the run-up to the Iraq war, and an introduction to a gorilla called Koko who mastered 246 words in American Sign Language.
Want to know some famous made-up words? Fancy a chapter called Fardling Gwiks? Intrigued by the question: Is the Sea Blue or Do I Just See It as Blue? Then this is the book for you It's Vivian Cook's second foray into relatively mainstream publishing.
Profile Books, which published Lynne Truss's mega-selling rant about poor punctuation, Eats, Shoots...