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Praise words

How do you begin to sort through the more than 3,500,000 place names found in the US? In Erin McKean’s Verbatim (Pimlico, £12.50) – the questions are almost more interesting than the answers in these essays from the eponymous language quarterly. Richard Lederer’s “The world according to student bloopersâ€� is a must: its trail of the misheard, the misunderstood and the mistaken winds from ancient Egyptians in “dessert cultivated by irritationâ€� to the “cure for rabbisâ€� attributed to Pasteur. Dotted throughout the book are ambiguous scraps of writing. “The new British Library – sitting comfortably on enlarged pilesâ€� was spotted in New Å®ÉúСÊÓÆµ by a reader back in 1986.