Death by dictionary

He reads dictionaries, voraciously. He loves roots, Latin traces, archaisms. Pours through every chance he can.

He knows amygdaloid means shaped like an almond, writes poems about amygdaloid eyes.

Discovering bacteriophage to be a virus parasitic on bacterium, he seeks out pubs where lab assistants may drink.

The discovery of cheongsam sent him to Chinatown, of declivity to the ski fields (though he hated the cold).

His search for an epergne for the dining table took him further afield than the nearest epeirogenesis, though he could bare not to leave without clarifying the meaning of his voyage with a little epexegesis.

By night he fleetingly dreamed of fellmongering, but by dawn he thought fichu might be more his thing - the weaving of lace he felt closer to his mode of weaving words.

He felt a pang of guilt at Godwottery, it cut a little close to the bone; but by harquebus he was quite off again - shooting off at the mouth with abandon.

His search for a tuff of ignnimbrite proved fruitful, a back alley deal with a gent with a dark coat and a bad limp. He was relieved it meant he need no longer catch an ignbis fatuus, its fleetingness a headache best avoided.

By jactitation he had a small scare, it was Godwottery all over again. He tossed and turned quite restlessly, Word Fever quite flaming his brow. His temperature soared and his belly near burst, with all the words he had devoured.

The fleece of a young karukal was his next quest, taking him to the peaks of Kathmandu. His luck had seemed in, but soon it was out, a laparotomy deemed to be the only thing.

It seemed his penchant for swallowing any word that came by, for gobbling with such wild abandon, had ultimately had what could only be called an unfortunate malefic effect. The doctor told him his soul was a natatorium awash with language's detritus, then launched an opprobrious attack on his habits, demanding his communication be delivered, henceforth, pelucidly, with none of its usual pullulations.

His quadragesimal hospital stay soon came to an end, 40 long days and nights without a word. But during this time his mind's ratiocinations failed to find a position to support the doctor's call.

Thus no sooner than out the door had he gone than it all became simply simply too much. The skating rink across the road teased him sorely with salchows as a lady passed by in samfu, a masage parlour offering tapotement.

"I must get out of here, before I go mad!" yelled the man as he stood in the street, "I can't stay around here with so much to name, I must simply head ultramontane!!"

When crossing the Alps, the Swiss but of course, he felt a moment's relief, but this soon gave way to terror as he felt the first pangs of vasoconstriction put pay to his dreams of wassail. He reached over and seized the most xiphoid item he could find, an umbrella with quite the honed point. With his mind on the Yggdrasil and its threat from malevolent serpents, he knew he must now make a move - plunging the point through his word-drenched heart he wore a smile, ending his life with the ultimate zugzwang.