Books: Word Salad

LANGUAGE ON VACATION by Dmitri A. Borgmann. 318 pages. Scribner. $6.95.

Subbookkeeper is the only English word that contains four successive pairs of letters. Triennially is one of the very few English words in which the odd and the even letters spell two complete words: tinily and renal. The longest English word that can be typed in the top letter line of a typewriter is—typewriter? The longest English word without an e in it is floccinaucinihilipilification (the action or habit of estimating things as worthless).

This resolutely useless information is published in one of the...