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Way More Words! Words!! Words!!!

hile these book-related entries are based on Robert Nerd: Dr. Seuss, whose real name was Theodor Seuss Geisel, invented the
Hendrickson’s The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and word “nerd” and used it in his If I Ran the Zoo in 1950. “And then, just to
WPhrase Origins, Checkmark Books; 2008, 4th edition; I have show them, I’ll sail to Ka-Troo, and bring back an It-Kutch a Preep and a
rewritten and enlarged some of the definitions. Poo Nerkle a Nerd and a Seersucker, too!” Somehow the word caught on
and was used to describe an intelligent person who is socially backward.
Trees and books: The Anglo Saxon name for the beech tree was “boc,” and
since they used the smooth bark of the beech tree for writing material, Murder will out: That phrase, which is the basis for mystery novels, was
“boc” eventually became “book” for when they bound the bark pages first written by Chaucer in The Nun’s Priest Tale in the 1300s as “Mordre
together. The Latin word for a large book is “folio,” which is said to take wol out, that we see day by day.” This basically means that you can’t get
its name from “folium” which means tree leaf in Latin which also gives us away with it. At least in books.
the word foliage. The words bible and bibliography come from the Greek
word “biblio” for the inner bark of papyrus which was used by the ancient Grangerize: Rev. James Granger (1723-1776) cut out as many as 14,000
Egyptians to write on. “Volume” portraits from books to use as possible illustrations for his
is from the Latin “volumen” which Biographical History of England, destroying many rare books
meant a roll of papyrus manuscript and in the process, and started a fad for doing this which was
code for a system of laws, and comes named for him. Gluing these purloined portraits into already
from the Latin codex which means the printed books is called “extra-illustrating.”
trunk of a tree from which wooden There was also a similar craze for this defilement of
tablets were made to write codes on. printed material recently called “scrapbooking.”
And I’m not even going to
mention that the pages of a book are Book without e’s: French author Georges Perec’s most
sometimes called leaves, and a single unusual books were one in which the letter “e,” the most
page a leaf. common vowel, wasn’t used, and another book in which e
was the only vowel used. But American author E.V. Wright’s
Pulps: And more recently, the word novel Gadsby didn’t use the letter e either and it was 50,000
“pulps” refers to inexpensive thriller words long. To make sure there were no e’s, Wright
periodicals printed on cheap pulp actually tied down the e key on
paper made from wood pulp whose his typewriter.
main ingredient is ground up trees
dissolved into a pulp by sulfuric acid. Out of sorts: This term for not
The lurid stories usually printed on feeling right may date from the
this type of paper are called “pulp days of hand-set printing type
fiction” which is also the name of the when a typesetter ran out of the
movie Pulp Fiction. sorts or kinds of type being used
Mass market paperbacks, news- in the middle of a job.
papers, and comic books are also
mostly printed on pulp paper – a Dime novel: Dime novels
cheaper paper made from wood pulp. were usually lurid, romantic
Pulp paper is very acidic due to the adventure stories published in an
residual sulphuric acid used to make inexpensive paperback format.
the paper, and turns brown and These were introduced by
crumbles away over time. Sun-light Bookjacket for Are you a Bromide?, by Gellet Burgess Also, an image of his Erastus Flavel Beadle in 1860 for
and oxygen also hasten the decay. signed ‘blurb’ that instructs one on how to read a book. his Dime Book Series. Sample
Some pulp paper is better than others. The cover was created for a limited edition of his tome and featured an titles included Malaeska, the
image of a “pulchritudinous young lade whom he facetiously dubbed
Miss Belinda Blurb. This illustration was a parody of the sort of women Indian Wife of the White Hunter.
Invented words: In 1914 humorist often featured on the covers of contemporary novels.” – worldhistories.net Advertised as being a dollar book
Gellett Burgess published his Burgess for a dime, they were so popular
Unabridged: A New Dictionary of Words You Have Always Needed which he sold 300,000 copies the first year alone.
contained hundreds of new words that he made up. As most invented In England, these trashy novels were called Penny Dreadfuls and the
words have a short life span or no life at all, only two of his words caught name stuck even after their price went up.
on: “bromide” and “blurb.” A blurb is a short ad for something often seen Later on, they were pulp novels or pulp fiction and so we are back to trees!
on the paper dust jacket covers of books.
Mark Twain also invented words. Some of them caught on
and some of them like “disenthusiasm,” “humanbeingship,” and
“jumbalacious” did not.
Shakespeare also invented lots of words. Interesting to think that if you James Dawson has owned and operated the Unicorn Bookshop in Trappe, MD since
used words that you invented how was anyone else supposed to know what 1975, when he decided it would be more fun to buy and sell old books and maps than to
get a “real” job. For this born collector, having a shop just might be another excuse to buy
they mean?! Context I guess. more books. He has about 30,000 second hand and rare books on the shelves, and just
about all subjects are represented. Reach him at P.O. Box 154; Trappe, MD 21673;
410-476-3838; unicornbookshopMD@gmail.com; www.unicornbookshop.com
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