Events

  Who knew that the great country of Canada is named for a mistake? Or that the adventures of ancient Greek sailors live on in the word "nostalgia"? 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, Phil Cousineau takes us on a tour into the obscure territory of word origins with great erudition and endearing curiosity. Reading and conversing shouldn’t be a strain and a struggle; they should be joys, ways to share and savor the conviviality of communication. The original sense of trivia was the enthusiastic trading of news at the crossroads, and with Wordcatcher, readers can pluck the jewels from Cousineau's work to use on their own. The English poet W. H. Auden was once asked to teach a poetry class. Two hundred students applied to study with him, but he only had room for twenty. 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.   Phil Cousineau is an award-winning writer and filmmaker, teacher and editor, independent scholar and travel leader, storyteller and TV host. His fascination with art, literature, and the history of culture has taken him from Michigan to Marrakesh, Iceland to the Amazon, in a worldwide search for what the ancients called the “soul of the world.”