The other day while looking for interesting words started with the letter "c," I came upon a very interesting website devoted to words.


Here is what the author has to say:

"Welcome to the International House of Logorrhea, a free online dictionary of weird and unusual words to help enhance your vocabulary. The IHL is a component of The Phrontistery, which has many other free word lists and unusual word related resources.

Did you ever have an English teacher who told you 'Whenever you read something, and find a word you don't know, look it up in the dictionary and write it down'? Well, I took that advice to heart. Of course, once you have a few hundred words down on your list, you think to yourself (if you are as obsessive as I am), 'Wouldn't it be a lot easier if I just read the whole dictionary, so that I could just do this word writing thing once and be done with it?' The result, after nearly a decade of conscientious word-collecting, is the International House of Logorrhea.

I have compiled a list of 15,500 English words, ranging from the merely uncommon to the extremely rare, nearly obsolete and just plain nutty! Each word is listed along with a brief, one-line definition. You should be able to get the general sense of most words, without having to read through pages of dictionary definitions. Having said that, don't go out and discard your dictionary."

One of my favorite features is the Pronunciation Poll where visitors to the site can vote on how they pronounce various words:

"This week our poll will look at the semantic domain of herbs and spices, and some of the pronunciation variability that emerges from it.

Poll #1308603 Spice rack

Which of the following best reflects how you pronounce the word 'basil'?


BAY-zle (rhymes with 'hazel')
125 (51.7%)

BAZZ-le (rhymes with 'dazzle')
75 (31.0%)

I use both these pronunciations
38 (15.7%)

Other (specify in comments)
4 (1.7%)
"

Sounds like a lot of fun, doesn't it? Well, maybe not for everyone, but to some of us it's right up there with the Outer Space Photo of the day website for pure excitement.