Online Word Maven Fills a Book

December 12, 2002

Anu Garg and Al Gore share more than initials. Both are authors of new books co-written with their wives, and both were treated to warm receptions last month at Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle, where they spoke and signed books, just days apart. Garg's book, A Word A Day: A Romp Through Some of the Most Unusual and Intriguing Words in English (Wiley), which he wrote with his wife, Stuti, is based on the Seattle resident's enormously successful Web site, A.Word.A.Day (http://wordsmith.org/awad).

In the beginning was one word and the word was "zephyr."

Insinuating itself every weekday by 4:00 a.m. EST into over 534,541 e-mail boxes on every continent (that's more than 206 countries), A.W.A.D has become as essential as a first cup of morning coffee, but free. Started by Garg, a 35-year-old, Indian-born computer engineer, in 1994 -- "during the Jurassic Era of the Internet"-- A.W.A.D. had humble beginnings.

While Garg was in a master's program for computer networking, he began sending a daily e-mail to a small group of interested friends and fellow students -- the first word he chose was zephyr. Garg compiled the unique messages, including the day's chosen word along with definitions, etymology, examples of usage, and occasional commentary.

Each week, since June 1996, Garg has selected a theme to which all the words relate. A Word A Day is organized into chapters that reprise some of these weekly themes. Some are esoteric -- "Words for Body Parts That are Used Metaphorically" and "Portmanteaux." Some are instructive -- "Words Not to Put on Your Resume" and "Words That Make the Spell-Checker Ineffective." And some are remarkable -- "Words That Contain the Vowels AEIOU Once and Only Once" and "Words That Make One Say, 'I Didn't Know There Was a Word for That.'" Quotes from notables as well as comments from A.W.A.D. readers are sprinkled throughout.

On the site and repeated in the book, Garg deftly selects intriguing words and places them in context using a panoply of sources, including daily newspapers and such mainstream publications as Time, People, and Money. Other citations come from slightly more rarified origins, such as The Armenian Reporter, Lake Magazine, the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore, and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels.

A world of words

Garg's immense knowledge of words and literature is particularly noteworthy since, born and reared in a remote village in Northern India, he did not learn English until the sixth grade. He first saw a library when he went to college. As Garg writes in a heartfelt announcement about the book on his Web site, "As a small child I remember sitting under the shade of a mango tree…. A few broken sticks of chalk and a blackboard made by painting a flat piece of wood with soot completed my classroom. The only language I knew was Hindi. Fast forward 20 years ... I so loved the music and magic of words that for the last nine years I shared it with half a million readers in more than 200 countries on every continent (even Antarctica). Today daily A.Word.A.Day is read by connoisseurs of the English language in places such as the BBC, Oxford University, the New York Times, and by at least two Pulitzer Prize winners and a Nobel laureate. An experience both exalting and humbling!"

In an interview with BTW from his home in Seattle, Garg expounded on his love of language, "I am deeply immersed in words and sometimes they come to me in dreams. Everything we do is reflected in those words. Sometimes I include personal reflections -- about my family, our five-year-old daughter -- and anecdotes. I receive many e-mails -- reader's responses and comments from all over the world." Garg said that some subscribers have complained of withdrawal symptoms if cyber-traffic delays the A.W.A.D. message. Others say that reading the A.W.A.D. e-mail is "the best moment of the day," he said.

"I research words in a variety of dictionaries. A word can be newly coined, but it must appear in at least one mainstream dictionary," Garg explained. However, Garg noted that "it may take time for a word to find acceptability, but that doesn't mean the word is illegitimate. The moment you speak a word, it's real." A.W.A.D. subscriber Cynthia Edwards argues for equality among words in an e-mail: "I cannot list any words I hate; as with ugly babies, though they may exist, it seems cruel to point at them. Words, like babies, all have inherent qualities that override their sound and appearance."

Where do new words come from and where do they go when they die?

"Certain dictionaries discard words based on frequency of use," said Garg, but that can reduce our comprehension of past cultures. "There are archaic words that help you understand poetry. The OED [Oxford English Dictionary] never drops a word: It's an historical record of the English language. Eventually, the paper edition will become prohibitively heavy and prohibitively expensive. The same information available on a CD-ROM is about $200 and can offer features such as full-text searches online. But you lose the pleasure of opening to a page and browsing through it. Some online dictionaries have included a feature to select a random word -- you can jump from page to page."

In the chapter titled "Newer Words in the Oxford English Dictionary," Garg includes such new coinages as "full monty," "bad hair day," and "webliography." "Many of these terms may appear to be slang," he writes, "But we should remember that today's revolutionaries are tomorrow's conservatives. So use these words in your writing and conversation with the official seal of approval from the OED."

With characteristic reserve, Garg omits his own addition to the language, a word that describes most everyone of the half million subscribers and the thousands who purchased the entire first printing of A Word A Day (and a good part of the second), before the official publication date. Two years ago, his coinage was included in the American Heritage Dictionary. It is profoundly applicable to Anu Garg. This word is "linguaphile," a lover of languages and words.. -- Nomi Schwartz

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