Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Allusions

Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Allusions PDF Author: Elizabeth Webber
Publisher: Merriam-Webster
ISBN: 9780877796282
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 614

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Book Description
A guide to references commonly used in speech and writing. Explains more than 900 allusions. Entries include examples from todays leading media. A must for serious readers, language lovers, and ESL students.

Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Allusions

Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Allusions PDF Author: Elizabeth Webber
Publisher: Merriam-Webster
ISBN: 9780877796282
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 614

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Book Description
A guide to references commonly used in speech and writing. Explains more than 900 allusions. Entries include examples from todays leading media. A must for serious readers, language lovers, and ESL students.

Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature

Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature PDF Author: Merriam-Webster, Inc
Publisher: Merriam-Webster
ISBN: 9780877790426
Category : Literature
Languages : en
Pages : 1260

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Book Description
Describes authors, works, and literary terms from all eras and all parts of the world.

The Facts On File Dictionary of Classical and Biblical Allusions

The Facts On File Dictionary of Classical and Biblical Allusions PDF Author: Martin H. Manser
Publisher: Infobase Publishing
ISBN: 0816048681
Category : Allusions
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
This indispensable work is a comprehensive resource offering abundant information that students and general readers of all ages will find clear and to the point. A useful companion to The Facts On File Dictionary of Cultural and Historical Allusions explains the meanings and origins of allusions from the Bible and classical mythology, including Greek, Roman, Norse, Celtic, and Egyptian. It features approximately 2,000 entries, from Abelard and Heloise to Zeus. It covers biblical and mythological figures (Narcissus, Athena, Daniel), places (Mount Olympus, Gesthemane, Elysian Fields), key concepts (doomsday, utopia), and other references with biblical and mythological origins (judgment of Solomon, salt of the earth, patience of Job, labors of Hercules). It also includes a pronunciation key for difficult words or terms; examples of usage; and extensive cross-references.

Insulting English

Insulting English PDF Author: Peter Novobatzky
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1429979003
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
At last, a compendium of ingeniously insulting words for every occasion. For anyone who's been stymied by the level of sloth, bad looks and low intelligence of his fellow man (and woman), help is on the way. You can't change the tiresome creatures around you, but now you can describe them behind their backs with pleasing specificity. Yes, Insulting English is a user's guide to little-known and much-needed words that include: Gubbertush: Buck-toothed person Hogminny: A depraved young woman Nihilarian: Person with a meaningless job Pursy: Fat and short of breath Scombroid: Resembling a mackerel Tumbrel: A person who is drunk to the point of vomiting These and many other gems from our colorful mother tongue are collected on these pages. Now every gink, knipperdollin, and grizely dunderwhelp can be called by his rightful name.

Oxford Dictionary of Nicknames

Oxford Dictionary of Nicknames PDF Author: Andrew Delahunty
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780198609483
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
A reference for the general reader contains concise explanations of the origins of over 1,800 nicknames from contemporary and historical culture referring to historical figures, politicians, athletes, entertainers, places, events, and organizations.

The Language of the American South

The Language of the American South PDF Author: Cleanth Brooks
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820331236
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 74

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Book Description
In this volume Cleanth Brooks pays tribute to the language and literature of the American South. He writes of the language's unique syntax and its celebrated languorous rhythms; of the classical allusions and Addisonian locutions once favored by the gentry; and of the more earthbound eloquence, rooted in the dialect of England's southern lowlands, that is still heard in the speech of the region's plain folk. It is this rich spoken language, Brooks suggests, that has always been the life blood of southern writing. The strong tradition of storytelling in the South is reflected in the tales told by Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus and in the obsessive retellings that structure William Faulkner's novels and stories. But even more crucially, the language of the South--firmly rooted in the land but with a tendency to reach for the heavens above--has shaped the literary concerns and molded the complex visions to be found in the poetry of Robert Penn Warren and John Crowe Ransom; the stories of Flannery O'Connor, Peter Taylor, and Eudora Welty; and the novels of Warren, Allen Tate, and Walker Percy.

The Shakespeare Name Dictionary

The Shakespeare Name Dictionary PDF Author: J. Madison Davis
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135875723
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 546

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Book Description
Entries provide the likely sources for a name; describe historical and mythological backgrounds; examine Shakespeare's presentation of a character or place; and suggest various interpretations of a name. Each entry contains line citations to William Shakespeare: The Complete Works. A guide to the historical, mythological, fictional, and geographic references that appear in Shakespeare's complete plays and poems, covering every name, proper adjective, official title, literary and mystical title, and place name.

The Hidden History of Coined Words

The Hidden History of Coined Words PDF Author: Ralph Keyes
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190466782
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Successful word-coinages--those that stay in currency for a good long time--tend to conceal their beginnings. We take them at face value and rarely when and where they were first minted. Engaging, illuminating, and authoritative, Ralph Keyes's The Hidden History of Coined Words explores the etymological underworld of terms and expressions and uncovers plenty of hidden gems. He also finds some fascinating patterns, such as that successful neologisms are as likely to be created by chance as by design. A remarkable number of new words were coined whimsically, originally intended to troll or taunt. Knickers, for example, resulted from a hoax; big bang from an insult. Casual wisecracking produced software, crowdsource, and blog. More than a few resulted from happy accidents, such as typos, mistranslations, and mishearing (bigly and buttonhole), or from being taken entirely out of context (robotics). Neologizers (a Thomas Jefferson coinage) include not just scholars and writers but cartoonists, columnists, children's book authors. Wimp originated with a book series, as did goop, and nerd from a book by Dr. Seuss. Coinages are often contested, controversy swirling around such terms as gonzo, mojo, and booty call. Keyes considers all contenders, while also leading us through the fray between new word partisans, and those who resist them strenuously. He concludes with advice about how to make your own successful coinage. The Hidden History of Coined Words will appeal not just to word mavens but history buffs, trivia contesters, and anyone who loves the immersive power of language.

The Story of Ain't

The Story of Ain't PDF Author: David Skinner
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062345753
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
“It takes true brilliance to lift the arid tellings of lexicographic fussing into the readable realm of the thriller and the bodice-ripper….David Skinner has done precisely this, taking a fine story and honing it to popular perfection.” —Simon Winchester, New York Times bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman The captivating, delightful, and surprising story of Merriam Webster’s Third Edition, the dictionary that provoked America’s greatest language controversy. In those days, Webster’s Second was the great gray eminence of American dictionaries, with 600,000 entries and numerous competitors but no rivals. It served as the all-knowing guide to the world of grammar and information, a kind of one-stop reference work. In 1961, Webster’s Third came along and ignited an unprecedented controversy in America’s newspapers, universities, and living rooms. The new dictionary’s editor, Philip Gove, had overhauled Merriam’s long held authoritarian principles to create a reference work that had “no traffic with…artificial notions of correctness or authority. It must be descriptive not prescriptive.” Correct use was determined by how the language was actually spoken, and not by “notions of correctness” set by the learned few. Dwight MacDonald, a formidable American critic and writer, emerged as Webster’s Third’s chief nemesis when in the pages of the New Yorker he likened the new dictionary to the end of civilization.. The Story of Ain’t describes a great cultural shift in America, when the voice of the masses resounded in the highest halls of culture, when the division between highbrow and lowbrow was inalterably blurred, when the humanities and its figureheads were shunted aside by advances in scientific thinking. All the while, Skinner treats the reader to the chippy banter of the controversy’s key players. A dictionary will never again seem as important as it did in 1961.

Garner on Language and Writing

Garner on Language and Writing PDF Author: Bryan A. Garner
Publisher: American Bar Association
ISBN: 9781604424454
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 884

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Book Description
Since the 1987 appearance of A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage, Bryan A. Garner has proved to be a versatile and prolific writer on legal-linguistic subjects. This collection of his essays shows both profound scholarship and sharp wit. The essays cover subjects as wide-ranging as learning to write, style, persuasion, contractual and legislative drafting, grammar, lexicography, writing in law school, writing in law practice, judicial writing, and all the literature relating to these diverse subjects.