As I have told you before, if you were paying attention, I have a number of esoteric and/or bizarre dictionaries that I love to browse. If you have others that I haven't heard of, please let me know.

Here's my list (after re-charging):

Landmarks, by Robert Macfarlane. I told you about this one some time in the fall. It's a field guide to the British landscape but the part of it that I love best, parts, I should say, are the Glossaries, with the magical (esoteric0 local language. Eleven in all, but the tenth one is blank, for "future place-words and the reader's own terms."

I have a few in there; ice-worms (Bill's expression); darkness melts (a child's explanation of morning light); shit-brindle (I don't like brown); scunge (my father's expression); noodle ( I think mine); jolly (my father's again, his version of a tschotschke).

They Have a Word For It: A Light-Hearted Lexicon of Untranslatable Words and Phrases by (that is, gathered together by) Howard Rheingold. One of my favourites is lagniappe. You can look it up.

The Book of Jargon: An Essential Guide to the Inside Languages of Today, by (com[iled by)Don Ethan Miller. There's all kinds of different categories, but I couldn't find zamboni.

Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary of Unusual Obscure, and Preposterous Words, by Josefa Heifetz Byrne. My favourite. She doesn't have huddle, though, or hirple. [Note: my stupid auto-check keeps trying to put an h on that first word instead of a g. I hate it when something corrects me incorrectly.] She does have sloom (to doze, to become weak, to decay, dog move sluggishly, to drift. sloomy, adj. And I like thirl: to pierce or perforate, to make vibrate, to enslave . adj: gaunt, thin, shrivelled.

Shakespeare's Bawdy, by Eric Partridge.Everyoe should re-read this before they go to Stratford.

More to come - not sure when.....