Depraved and Insulting English

A merger has taken place between Peter Novobatzky and Ammon Shea's books Depraved English and Insulting English. The result? Depraved and Insulting English. "Some of the entries are lascivious," the authors say, "some revolting, and others derogatory. A few are all of these things." This book will provide blissful browsing for anyone who ever got a fourth-grade thrill from looking up naughty words in the dictionary or, later, felt a frisson of pleasure from using obscure but racy words that few others understood. Many of the terms here--such as coprolagnia, cypripareunia, hybristophiliac, peotillomian, and sacofricosis--sound downright illicit. More intriguing are the words that sound perfectly acceptable, like blissom, feist, and plooky. But watch out for the plooky fellow who lets out a feist when he blissoms; he's actually a pimply guy who farts silently while copulating with ewes. Eeew.--Jane Steinberg

• The Highly Selective Dictionary for the Extraordinarily Literate
• The Indispensable Dictionary of Unusual Words: Over 6,000 Obscure and Preposterous Words to Know, Learn, and Love
• The Word Lover's Dictionary: Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words
• The Superior Person's Book of Words
• The Thinker's Thesaurus: Sophisticated Alternatives to Common Words (Expanded Third Edition)
• Forgotten English
• A Word A Day: A Romp Through Some of the Most Unusual and Intriguing Words in English
• The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten
• The Highly Selective Dictionary of Golden Adjectives: For the Extraordinarily Literate
• Amo, Amas, Amat and More (Hudson Group Books)