From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

"At times I had thought of writing poetry myself but getting words to rhyme with each other is difficult, like trying to drive a herd of turkeys and kangaroos down a crowded thoroughfare and keep them neatly together without looking in shop windows.  There are so many words, and they all mean something."
—Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet

"A good middle initial can really add a lot.  Take 'R' for example."
—John Astin in Get to Know Your Rabbit

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

You've heard of a "murder of crows" and other fun collective nouns.  But what do you call a collection of elders?

"An infinity of elders." —William Beckford, Vathek

Xenagorabibliomania: an obsessive curiosity about the books that strangers read in open spaces (Nick Hornby).

Tiny gems in Shakespeare's work

We're honored to have designed the one-letter words edition of the exceedingly charming Shakespeare Papers.  Editor Robin Williams explains: "Looking at the wee bits, we believe, allows us to gain an even greater appreciation of the whole."

"Coming up with an idea is a confounded thing.  We think our brain produces them, but in reality they do what they like with our brain and are more unbiddable than any living creature."
—Gustav Meyrink, The Green Face

This bold, all-caps typo in Amanda Owen's The Power of Receiving disturbs us not because the apostrophe is upside down, and not because "don'r" isn't a word, but because "don'r" is pronounced "Donner," as in the snowbound American pioneers who didn't limit themselves to non-human meat.

(Dedicated to the ever-beguiling Martha Brockenbrough.)

Why begin "astonish" with a double S?  Interestingly, the word derives from the Latin tonāre, "to thunder," and the double S glyph of pre-Columbian Mexico is a symbol of clouds, rain, and water.

"I'm looking for the letter C," he said to the door-keeper.
"Why don't you look between B and D then?  . . . What's the matter with you?"
—Robin Llywelyn, From Empty Harbour to White Ocean

The great Australian comedy series Kath & Kim features some hilariously dumbfounding baby names, such as:

• Typhphaanniii (pronounced Tiffany)
• Eppinn'knee Rae¨</i> (Rae is followed by an [umlaut] and a [close italics])
  
• Detestannii
• Paloma
• Papiloma
• Tailuh (pronounced Tai Luh)
• Glen Waverley (after a suburb in Victoria, Australia)
• Aussie
• Fat Free Frûche
• Tiramisu
  

Then there are these baby names, inspired by a hospital visit (and please note that they all sound better with an Australian accent):

• Neil Bymouth
• Cardio Infarction (the downside being the inevitable nickname "Farct")
• Enema (for a girl)
  
• Lupus (for a boy)
  
• Catheter
  
• I.V. (for a girl)
  

"No real idea can be said to exist without the words made to measure." —Vladimir Nabokov, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

"Is all the mythology in the world here?"
"No . . . Only words are here.  They try to make me yield the rest but my words come from the North Country.  They can't be pinned down between book covers.  Our words like to play on the breeze.  They congregate in the hollows of streams and fill the ravines."
—Robin Llywelyn, From Empty Harbour to White Ocean

We're often asked why we blog using the majestic plural (the "royal we").  Truth be told, it's personal.  Our 27th great grandfather, King Henry II of England (so charmingly portrayed by Peter O'Toole in the classic film The Lion in Winter) is credited with the first recorded use of the majestic plural.  Please don't mistake our pronouns for "the patronizing we" (as in, "Aren't we chipper today?") or "the psychotic we" (as in Gollum's "We wants it, we needs it.  Must have the precious.")

Scrabble lovers can save 60% with the iPad edition of our popular Dictionary of Improbable Words (all-consonant and all-vowel words):

http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/wyes-dictionary-improbable/id430260019

Prof. Oddfellow reads some penetrating literature: Jonathan Safran Foer's Tree of Codes.

From our former outpost at Twitter:

Kudos to Gary Barwin for this Googlewhack: "Metaphor, it's really something else!"

A lovely review of our dictionary of magic words, from the Silver Star Journal:

A massive and truly amazing tour de force of linguistic dexterity, merging sorcery, etymology, history, and literature into a global cascade of words of power magical and otherwise, drawn from countless ancient and modern civilizations. The art of Grammarye meets literary erudition, with each word examined, explained, and illuminated by wild and witty quotations from countless sources. Spells, mantras and Qabala meet slang, hokum and poetry. Enormous fun, and about thirty pages devoted to aspects of Abracadabra and its variants alone! Big fun! Hours of creative playtime!