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Richard Lederer is a fly-by-the-roof-of-the-mouth verbivore, logolept, and wordaholic, perhaps the most wordstruck, word bethumped wordaholic you may ever encounter.
Dr. Lederer is the author of more than 60 books about language, history, and humor, including his best-selling ANGUISHED ENGLISH series and his current books, AMERICAN TRIVIA, AMAZING WORDS, HILARIOUS HOLIDAY HUMOR, and THE BIG BOOK OF WORDPLAY CROSSWORDS. His works range from bloopers and puns to word origins and word games to pets and American history.
With Charles Harrington Elster, Richard Lederer is founding co-host of “A Way With Words” on National Public Radio. His language columns appear in newspapers and magazines throughout the United States, including the San Diego UNION-TRIBUNE.
Richard Lederer has been named International Punster of the Year and Toastmasters International’s Golden Gavel winner.
I was the kind of child who, almost as soon as he could talk, saw a butterfly and cooed, “Oh, goody. A butterfly will flutter by.” When I grew up, I improved that spoonerism to read “A dragonfly will drink its flagon dry.” Wordstruck throughout my life, I became editor of my junior high school literary magazine and my high school newspaper.
I entered Haverford College as a pre-medical student but soon found that I was reading the chemistry books for their literary value. So I became an English major and then attended Harvard Law School, where I found that I read the law cases for their literary value. Rather than fighting my verbivorous instincts, I switched into a Masters of Arts and Teaching program at Harvard. That led to a position at St. Paul’s School, in Concord, NH, where I taught English and media for 27 wonderful years. I would have gladly served them all their days, but my earning a Ph.D. in English and Linguistics from the University of New Hampshire inspired me to start writing my books on language. The enthusiastic popular response to these books, beginning with Anguished English, inspired me to leave the St. Paul’s community to extend my mission of teachership.
That’s what I do now, as a fly-by-the-roof-of-the-mouth user-friendly English teacher, Wizard of Idiom, Attila the Pun, and Conan the Grammarian.More than a million of my books have been sold, most with Pocket Books, Bantam Doubleday Dell, St. Martin’s Press, Gibbs Smith, Marion Street Press, and Waterside Productions. My books have been Book-of-the-Month Club and Literary Guild alternate selections, and my work has appeared in the New York Times, Sports Illustrated, AARP, National Review, Farmers Almanac, Saturday Evening Post, and Reader’s Digest.As a San Diegan, I am button-burstingly proud to announce that my column, “Lederer on Language,” has, for more than a decade, appeared in the San Diego Union Tribune.I am a founding co-host of “A Way With Words,” which reaches hundreds of Public Radio Stations throughout our land.
I have been elected International Punster of the Year, and Toastmasters International has awarded me its Golden Gavel. For those organizations that need a brief biography about me for an introduction, please go to the statement I have prepared under the Public Speaking tab.
Welcome to the website woven for wordaholics, logolepts, and verbivores. Carnivores eat meat; herbivores eat plants and vegetables; verbivores devour words. If you are heels over head (as well as head over heels) in love with words, tarry here a while to graze or, perhaps, feast on the English language. Ours is the only language in which you drive in a parkway and park in a driveway and your nose can run and your feet can smell.