The Word Detective

Can you drink a glass of balderdash? What do you call the part of a dog's back it can't scratch? And if, serendipitously, you find yourself in Serendip, then where exactly are you? The answers to all of these questions -- and a great many more -- can be found in the pages of the Oxford English Dictionary , the definitive record of the English language. And there is no better guide to the dictionary's many wonderments than the former chief editor of the OED , John Simpson. Simpson spent almost fo