De Boinod went to Harrow School.

De Boinod worked on the first series of the television panel game QI. His research on the show involved him reading an entire Albanian language dictionary and noting down any words which he found interesting. He formed the idea that there are 27 different words for moustaches and 27 words for eyebrows in Albanian, including, "vetullan" ("very bushy eyebrows"), "vetullor" ("slightly arched eyebrows") and "vetullosh" ("very thick eyebrows"). There was also a question asking the meaning of the word "vetullushe", which was claimed to be "a goat with brown eyebrows".

After leaving QI, de Boinod began to investigate other languages, examining 280 dictionaries and 140 websites. This lead to the creation of his first book in 2005, The Meaning of Tingo, a book featuring words which have no equivalent in the English language, "tingo" being a word from the Pascuense language of Easter Island meaning, "to borrow things from a friend's house, one by one, until there's nothing left". He then wrote up a follow-up book entitled Toujours Tingo in 2007. In 2009, de Boinod wrote The Wonder of Whiffling, a book about unusual words in English, the word "whiffling" having several meanings, including, "one who examined candidates for degrees an officer who cleared the way for a procession, as well as being the name of the man with the whip in Morris dancing."