Have you ever loaned a bedpresser (a heavy lazy fellow) a muckender (handkerchief)? Or felt your mind skimble-skamble (wander) in the company of an abecedarian (one who teaches the alphabet)?

First published in two mighty volumes in 1755, Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language was the exhaustive result of seven years' research culminating in the first true lexicon of the English language. Perusing the pages of this famous Dictionary reveals an eclectic profusion of words that are either completely unfamiliar to a twenty-first-century reader or have acquired different meanings in modern usage.

Elizabeth Drury has combed through Johnson's magnum opus to compile a new dictionary of forgotten, curious, hilarious and - occasionally - quite useful words. So don't be a wantwit and learn your arse foot from your emunctories to impress your potcompanions at the next symposiack.