Here are more terrific books by Allan Metcalf, the professor and linguist we interview in this week's Behind the Dictionary feature. Please check them out:

America in So Many Words: Words That Have Shaped America

The World in So Many Words: A Country-by-Country Tour of Words That Have Shaped Our Language

How We Talk: American Regional English Today

Presidential Voices: Speaking Styles from George Washington to George W. Bush

These websites offer word lovers a little something for everyone!

Oxford Word of the Year. Drum roll, please...

Amazing Coincidences. Of language, that is.

Free Rice. Fight poverty with vocabulary.

Don't start a babag over language! Check out these lists that collect words, words and more words from the fringes of English?

International House of Logorrhea

Compendium of Lost Words

Word Oddities

Luciferous Logolepsy

SKB Dictionary

Chef Terrance Brennan is the founder of Artisanal Premium Cheese, a company that practices the fine art of affinage -- the age-old craft of maturing and aging cheese to achieve peak flavor. He's also something of a cheese revolutionary -- a chef who's helped Americans discover and appreciate the sublime magic of handcrafted artisanal cheese (we'll get to that word in a minute). What better person to ask about cheese words?

Paste. "The body within the rind of the cheese, what the French call the 'pate.' In other words, the interior of the cheese."

Farmstead. "Cheese milked and produced from the same farm."

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Wordsmith.org is something of an institution on the Internet, an online community started by computer-engineer-turned-linguist Anu Garg back in 1994 that now reaches more than 600,000 subscribers in 200 countries with its daily A.Word.A.Day newsletter. This email is more than just a new word every day: Anu also adds a daily, delicious quote from his extensive literary readings to inspire, challenge -- and surprise -- us. The Visual Thesaurus is proud to sponsor A.Word.A.Day and delighted to speak with Anu about his own, latest, book, on "the hidden lives and strange origins of words" entitled, The Dord, the Diglot, and an Avocado or Two. Our conversation:  Continue reading...

Anu Garg, the creator of the popular Word.A.Day email we interview in this week's "Behind the Dictionary" feature, recommends these books on words and language:

Word Origins by Anatoly Liberman

Limits of Language by Mikael Parkvall

The Oxford Guide to World English by Tom McArthur

The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots by Calvert Watkins