THERE ARE 613,000 WORDS IN THE English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, and it simply isn't enough. True English has more than any other language, and true those 613,000 words work pretty well for most purposes, but there are so many things for which there is no English word, at least not yet.

Why, for example, have we not invented a word to describe the impotent fury one feels on being given an explanation by the plumber or mechanic that is plainly untrue and involves spending more money, but which one lacks the necessary expertise to refute? How should one describe that vague but intense feeling of disappointment when you know you are about to sneeze but, for some reason, don't. Or the flush of anger/gloating/transferred embarrassment experienced when someone else's mobile phone rings in the theatre.

Adam Jacot de Boinod has made a career out of unearthing useful or unlikely words that exist in other languages, and ought to exist in ours. A few years ago he published the best-

selling The Meaning of Tingo, now followed by Toujours Tingo, the result of trailing through 130 dictionaries and 140 websites in search of yet more words that deserve to make the leap, if not into English, then at least into the consciousness of English-speakers. (Tingo is a word from the Easter Islands meaning “to borrow objects from a friend's house, one by one, until there is nothing left”.)

I am not sure how I have got through life so far without knowing there is a word to describe “a young man of excessively good manners whom you suspect of ulterior motives”. In German this is a Tantenverfuhrer, literally an “aunt seducer”. Similarly, the planet is presumably full of people who “try to curry favour or draw attention to themselves by doing lots of work, but doing it badly”; yet only in Malawi is there a word for such a person, jijirira.

Such terms often encapsulate some attribute or concept that is oddly familiar, even though we have no word for it. Take kokobijin, a Japanese word for “the sort of woman who talks incessantly about how she would have been thought of as a stunner if she had lived in a different era, when men's tastes in beauty were different”. Every workplace is full of neko-

nekos, an Indonesian term for “one who has a creative idea that only makes things worse”, but we never knew what to call them before.

The Germans are particularly adept at inventing words to describe particular sorts of people or embarrassing social occasions. Trittbretfahrer, for example, means “to take advantage of someone else's efforts without contributing anything” (literally, it is “the person who rides on the stepping-board of a train without buying a ticket”). “Freeloader” seems pallid by comparison. Who has not bridled at the behaviour of the Spensenritter (literally “expenses knight”), the executive who shows off by settling the bill with maximum ostentation, even though his company is paying and it costs him nothing. The echoes of bogus chivalry in the behaviour of the “expenses knight” are particularly apt.

German is the only language to boast a word meaning to “make up a new word on the spot in a moment of need”: ad hoc Bildungen. There is even an invented German word that means a fear of palindromes (words that read the same backwards and forwards), which is, of course, a palindrome: Eibohphobie.

Sadly there is no word in English for “an act someone does for you thinking they are doing you a favour, but which you really didn't want them to do”. But the Germans have one: Barendienst. The Japanese, however, have gone one better (or worse, in terms of tortured social behaviour), with arigata-meiwaku. This means “an act that someone does for you thinking they are doing you a favour, but which you really didn't want them to do, and for which, according to social conventions, you now have to express suitable gratitude that you don't actually feel, to avoid giving offence”. Think of the sensation you get at Christmas when your mother gives you yet another set of matching handkerchiefs, and you know the meaning of arigata-meiwaku.

Other words in this new collection are less useful, but still intriguing. There are few occasions when one can successfully deploy the Inuit word areodjarekput, “to exchange wives for a few days only”, unless you are planning to move to Alaska or go on Wife Swap.

But such terms provide a fascinating insight into different cultures. Tsonga, the language of the Limpopo region of South Africa, has two crucial words that no one should be without: dlanyaa, “to lie on one's back with legs apart gorged with food”, and rhwe, “to sleep on the floor without a mat, and usually drunk and naked”. I have never been to Limpopo, but it is clearly a wonderful place.

Toujours Tingo: More Extraordinary Words to Change the Way We See the World by Adam Jacot de Boinod

Penguin, £10.99

Explore Books

• Book Extracts

• Book Reviews

• Books Group

• Audio Books

Times Recommends

• The Sunday Times 100 best holiday reads
• What will we be reading this summer: the booksellers predict
• Literary festivals: a survivor’s guide