Wordcatcher cover art

Wordcatcher

An Odyssey into the World of Weird and Wonderful Words

 Preview

£0.00 for first 30 days

Try for £0.00
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Wordcatcher

By: Phil Cousineau
Narrated by: Jack Chekijian
Try for £0.00

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £14.99

Buy Now for £14.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

Who knew that the great country of Canada is named for a mistake? How about "bedswerver", the best Elizabethan insult to hurl at a cheating boyfriend?

By exploring the delightful back stories of the 250 words in Wordcatcher, listeners will be lured by language and entangled in etymologies. Author Phil Cousineau takes us on a tour into the obscure territory of word origins with great erudition and endearing curiosity.

The English poet W. H. Auden was once asked to teach a poetry class, and when 200 students applied to study with him, he only had room for 20 of them. When asked how he chose his students, he said he picked the ones who actually loved words. So too, with this book - it takes a special wordcatcher to create a treasure chest of remarkable words and their origins, and any word lover will relish the stories that Cousineau has discovered.

©2010 Cleis Press (P)2011 Cleis Press Words, Language & Grammar World Student
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

Listeners also enjoyed...

 The Painted Word cover art
Asian Journals cover art
Expletives Deleted cover art
The Crafty Poet cover art
The Fiery Angel cover art
How a Poem Moves cover art
World Enough & Time cover art
Defiant Joy cover art
Curiosity cover art
Nabokov in America cover art
Packing My Library cover art
Greek to Me cover art
My Father, Frank Lloyd Wright cover art
My Reading Life cover art
Henry Miller on Writing cover art
Children's Literature cover art

Critic reviews

"Cousineau takes us into the obscure territory of word origins with great erudition and endearing curiosity." ( Writer's Journal)
"Phil Cousineau is a word wizard and his book, Wordcatcher, is a delightful adventure into a magical world. As I read his amazing etymological explanations of words from eldritch to floccinaucinihilipilification to lagniappe, I begin to understand why the Bible says 'In the beginning was the Word.' Phil has made clear that words don’t merely describe reality. They create it." (Deepak Chopra)
"Stake out a claim next to the standard dictionary you use for this less pedantic companion. It contains fewer words but sends up Fourth of July skyrockets on all of them. But caveat emptor, readers beware! Cousineau’s love affair with words is contagious and you are likely to end up lovesick with words yourself." (Huston Smith, author of The World’s Religions and Tales of Wonder)

What listeners say about Wordcatcher

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 3 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    1
Performance
  • 3 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    1
Story
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Audible.co.uk reviews

Amazon reviews
Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars
Profile Image for A

Awful narration

I had to stop listening. The content may have been ok but the narration sounded like it was read by a machine. This is a book about words and an opportunity to squeeze the juice from mellifluous words that the narrator let pass. Worse than lay was the lack of pause. Essentially it was reading a dictionary aloud but each new word was introduced without pause or change of tone as if it was the start of a new sentence rather than paragraph. The onslaught of words at a regular bullet like pace meant there was no room to savour the meaning let alone gather the topic had changed. It was possibly a very good book ruined by the way it was read aloud.

Report this

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!