Review: The Professor and the Madman

The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A fascinating read!
I finished this book months ago, but it feels like yesterday... the story is that memorable. If you think you have an idea how the original dictionaries were created, think again. This book will blow your mind. It does move a bit slow at times, but I could put up with it, given the surprises that it contains. There are lovely word interludes, giving insight to how the definitions of certain words were created. And, yes, there IS a madman at the centre of the story.

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Vexatious litigant

Love it when I hear a word or phrase on the radio or a podcast that is new to me. Today it was "vexatious litigant". The context was a new story about a woman being declared a vexatious litigant. I wasn't really listening to the story, so the details didn't register, but the term did. Google certainly did help me, as I couldn't have guessed the spelling.

vex•a•tious

ADJECTIVE

1 Causing or tending to cause annoyance, frustration, or worry.
‘the vexatious questions posed by software copyrights’

1.1 Law Denoting an action or the bringer of an action that is brought without sufficient grounds for winning, purely to cause annoyance to the defendant.
‘a frivolous or vexatious litigant’
‘No man, let alone a vexatious litigant, has a vested right to bring or continue proceedings which are an abuse of the process of the court.’

Source: Oxford Living Dictionaries

Resources
 'Wasteful' B.C. woman who 'wouldn't take no for an answer' in court banned from suing opponents - the CBC story that started my investigation this morning

My choice of Oxford for my source today is not random. I've recently started listening to the Audible version of "The Professor and the Madman" by Simon Winchester, which tells the very remarkable story behind the Oxford Dictionary.