We live in a torrent of words from radio and television, books and newspapers, and now from the internet. But, as Julian Burnside reminds us in this witty and erudite collection, words are both a source of pleasure and power, and can be deployed for good or for ill. Some of these essays explore curiosities in odd corners of the language simply to remind us of the extraordinary richness of the English language: we learn, for example, that the word pedigree refers to the shape of a stork's foot, and that halcyon recalls an early Greek love story.