Raised in a San Diego household, Kacirk had an epiphany as an 11-year-old when he watched Shakespeare productions at the Old Globe Theatre there. Kacirk became a word sleuth the same way competitor, which used to mean 'partner,' came to mean 'rival': circuitously. Consider the example included in the definition of invasion in Johnson's dictionary: 'Reafon finds a fecret grief and remorfe from every invasion that fin makes upon innocence.' Literary, lovely (it's from South's Sermons) - and packed, in the old font, with an s that look like an f. 'But when you find something,' Kacirk says, 'it makes it worth the time.' 'You can read a lot of dull stuff in these books,' he says, referring to such works as the Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia, by John Mactaggart, published in 1824, or the 1825 Glossary of North Country Words, by John Trotter Brokett. Granted, not all in the world of musty tropes is fun, a word Kacirk uses often. Kacirk's book is a flip-through find, perfect for everyone from lay word nerds to top-dollar scholars. Ah, but back in 1849, James Bartlett noted that 'To have a sneaking notion for a lady is to have a timid or concealed affection for her.'Īnd so it goes, alphabetically, beginning with abandon ('to banish, to drive away' - John Phin, 1902) and ending with a zig-zag ('drunk' - Edward Fraser and John Gibbons, 1925).

The sneaking notion today means a creeping sense of something. Samuel Johnson's 1755 Dictionary of the English Language, 'A machine in which children are enclosed to teach them to walk, and which they push forward without danger of falling.' The go-cart, which we know as a small motorized vehicle in which kids zoom around, was, according to Dr. In his new book - subtitled 'Surprising Meanings for Familiar Words' - Kacirk has collected current words and provided earlier definitions and their sources. He will, for example, consult one of the 13 first-edition volumes of the original Oxford English Dictionary at the bottom of one of two tall, full living-room bookshelves: 'Did you know that pornography meant 'a description of prostitutes or prostitution as a matter of public hygiene?' ' Spend any time with Kacirk - author of three books, including the just- released 'Altered English' (Pomegranate Communications $22.95) - in his cozy 1908 cottage tucked among the trees in hilly Corte Madera, and he'll start opening some of his several hundred ancient reference books and dropping all kinds of titillating nuggets.

Jeffrey kacirk