SOURCE: Penelope, Julia. “Erratic, Ecstatic, Eccentric.” Women's Review of Books 5, no. 3 (December 1987): 5-6.

In the following review, Penelope offers a positive evaluation of Websters' First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language.

Have you ever stopped in the middle of an intense conversation to search for the “right” word? Have you ever found yourself in an emotionally charged situation in which your mind went blank, and hours, even days, later suddenly realized what you could have said? When it happens to me, I say that I'm “at a loss for words,” and spend sleepless nights scratching at “I should have said's.”

Typically, our English teachers encourage us to believe that these lapses are our fault, that the language has all the resources one could ever want, and that we are somehow lacking—in vocabulary, cleverness, wit. But in language, as elsewhere, form follows function. As a consequence of...