Book Review: The Wonder of Wiffling

Did you know that one who makes umbrellas is called a mushfaker? If not, read on. Here's a review from the Irish Independent of The Wonder of Wiffling:

...a new book offers rich pastures for even those with the gift of the gab. In its pages, office underlings can find fresh terms of abuse for their overlords, disgruntled husbands will discover new words to describe the mother-in-law and the wag in the pub need never be silenced again.

There are gems such as a seagull used to describe the kind of manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps over everything and then leaves, or a shubie, one of those sorry souls who buys all the latest surfing gear but doesn't surf.

The Wonder of Whiffling, which is published today, takes readers on a delightful tour of the extraordinary words in the English language, from ancient and now disused words to trailer park slang. Its chapters include rarely used terms such crambazzled -- to be aged prematurely through drink -- to words we have sadly lost from everyday use such as mushfaker -- someone who repairs umbrellas -- and stadge -- the date of issue stamped on a coin....

The book helps to keep wordsmiths up-to-date with the latest editions to the language, such as ham, used to describe legitimate email, as opposed to spam and popular textonyms, the name given to predictive text software coming up with the wrong word, such as 'book for cool', 'carnage for barmaid' and 'poisoned for Smirnoff'.

Read on...