A divine gift for the word-obsesseda deliciously eccentric world tour of words that have no English equivalent

The countless language freaks who've worn out their copies of Eats, Shoots and Leaves will find inexhaustible distraction in The Meaning of Tingo. Where else will they discover that Bolivians have a word that means "I was rather too drunk last night and it's all their fault"? As for tingo, on Easter Island it means "to take all the objects one desires from the house of a friend, one at a time, by borrowing them." Organized by themes such as food, the human body, and sex and love, this irresistible book combs through more than 254 languages in search of those gorgeous oddities that have no direct English counterpartwords so strange and apt that if they didn't exist, they would have to be invented.

Highlights from The Meaning of Tingo:

mencomet (Indonesian): stealing things of small value such as food or drinks, partly for fun

scheissbedauern (German): the disappointment one feels when something turns out not nearly as badly as one had hoped

mono-no-aware (Japanese): appreciating the sadness of existence

mahj (Persian): looking beautiful after disease

plimpplamppletteren (Dutch): the skimming of a flat stone as many times as possible across the surface of the water

koshatnik (Russian): a dealer in stolen cats

ava (Tahitian): wife (but also means whisky)

At last we know those Eskimo words for snow and how the Dutch render the sound of Rice Krispies. Adam Jacot de Boinod has produced an absolutely delicious little book. (Stephen Fry, author of Ode Less Traveled)

Viva Tingo! The ideal bathroom browse book, and a divine gift for the word-obsessed: a funny, amazing, and even profound world tour of the best of all those strange words that don't have a precise English equivalent, the ones that tell us so much about other cultures' priorities and preoccupations, and expand our minds.

A garden of delights for the word obsessed, this book is a clever world tour of the best of all those strange words that don't have a precise English equivalent but tell so much about other cultures' priorities and preoccupations.

Adam Jacot de Boinod first developed his passion for foreign words while doing research for the BBC program Q1. In the course of compiling this book, he consulted some 220 dictionaries, 150 Web sites, and numerous books on language.