Anu Garg. Do you know that name? People in 171 countries do because they receive what the New York Times called “the most welcome, most enduring piece of daily mail in cyberspace.” I’m one of them.

Eleven years ago on January 8^th, 2008 I heard Garg (Indian-born and raised) at Village Books. Enchanted with his deep knowledge of words and their history, I subscribed to Word.A.Day (A.W.A.D), and I bought The Dord, the Diglot, and an Avocado or Two: the hidden lives and strange origins of common and not so common words. The title was a mouthful, but then as now, I’m fascinated by the words he chooses, defines, and writes about.  

Garg founded Wordsmith.org, the vehicle for A.Word.A.Day exactly 25 years ago today: March 14^th, 1994. He sent out his first word, zephyr––he liked the exotic sound of it and the meaning, “a breeze from the west”––when he was a graduate student in computer science at Case Western University in Cleveland. By 2002, his success allowed him to quit his corporate job at AT&T. Since Wordsmith’s inception, Garg has sent out 3.6 billion emails and featured 5,626 words. Here’s a recent favorite of mine: throttlebottom

Meaning: noun: A purposeless incompetent in public office.
Etymology: After Alexander Throttlebottom, a vice-presidential character in Of Thee I Sing, a 1931 musical comedy. Earliest documented use: 1932
Usage: [Lyndon B. Johnson] wanted to be Vice President, both to position himself as JFK’s successor someday and because he believed that he could convert any job––even Throttlebottom’s–– into a power base.” (James MacGregor Burns, The Crosswinds of Freedom, Knopf, 1989)

Will I use throttlebottom in conversation? Probably not. Still, I like knowing that it’s available to apply to a recalcitrant legislator. Likewise, scapegut, cernuous, mordibezza, and clutchfist. Not all curious, obscure words are meant for more than an appreciative smile. Some go straight to my brain’s wastepaper basket. As a writer I might find a fun application for palilogy (the repetition of words especially for emphasis) at my critique group and once, I used alazon (a person characterized by arrogance, braggadocio, lack of self-awareness, etc.) in Words with Friends, wedging the Z onto a triple square.

To celebrate its anniversary, Wordsmith.org has announced limerick, anagram, pangram and coin-a-word contests. You know what limericks are. Anagrams are words that use the same letters, like debit car/bad credit or dormitory/dirty room. A pangram uses all the letters in the alphabet as in “Intoxicated Queen Elizabeth vows Mickey Jagger is perfection.”  Garg’s coined  word, linguaphile (a lover of words) made it into the American Heritage Dictionary.

Wordsmith has assembled an impressive list of judges to judge the contests Garg is offering: big names in the word biz like Will Shortz, New York Times puzzle editor, Kory Stamper, author of Word by Word, and Richard Lederer, author of the humorous classic, Anguished English. Prizes include books, dictionaries, and a tour of the offices of the Oxford English Dictionary in the UK. I had to still my heart over that last prize. I like to read anagrams, limericks, and pangrams; I don’t like to write them. Maybe I could coin a word: how ‘bout Gargfan?

Wait. Maybe I should check the OED to see if it is already a word. Results: ‘‘No dictionary entries found for Gargfan. Did you mean arghan, gangman, marfan, or sarafan.’’ Nope. Garg, no gangster he, bears no resemblance to the fiber of a South American plant, a heritable disorder of connective tissues, or a long mantel that is part of the national dress of Russian peasant women.

Gargfan: what do you think? I’m a fan. Anyone else?

P.S. For more about how Anu Garg uses his created vocation as balm for his mom, see https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/19/…/solver-crosswords-child-becomes-parent.html