Strange to Say: Etymology as Serious Entertainment PDF Download
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Author: Deborah Warren
Publisher: Paul Dry Books
ISBN: 1589881575
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 204
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Book Description
“You can’t stop language, because when all’s said and done is never.” In her witty account of the origins of many English words and expressions, Deborah Warren educates as she entertains―and entertain she does, leading her readers through the amazing labyrinthian history of related words. “Language,” she writes, “is all about mutation.” Read here about the first meanings of common words and phrases, including dessert, vodka, lunatic, tulip, dollar, bikini, peeping tom, peter out, and devil’s advocate. A former Latin teacher, Warren is a gifted poet and a writer of great playfulness. Strange to Say is a cornucopia of joyful learning and laughter. Did you know… Lord Cardigan was a British aristocrat and military man known for the sweater jackets he sported. A lying lawyer might pull the wool over a judge’s eyes―yank his wig down across his face. In the original tale of Cinderella, her slippers were made of vair (“fur”)―which in the orally-told story mistakenly turned into the homonym verre (“glass”). Like laundry, lavender evolved from Italian lavanderia, “things to be washed.” The plant was used as a clothes freshener. It smells better than, say, the misspelled Downy Unstopable with the ad that touts its “feisty freshness,” unaware that feisty evolved from Middle English fisten―fart.
Author: Deborah Warren
Publisher: Paul Dry Books
ISBN: 1589881575
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 204
Get Book Here
Book Description
“You can’t stop language, because when all’s said and done is never.” In her witty account of the origins of many English words and expressions, Deborah Warren educates as she entertains―and entertain she does, leading her readers through the amazing labyrinthian history of related words. “Language,” she writes, “is all about mutation.” Read here about the first meanings of common words and phrases, including dessert, vodka, lunatic, tulip, dollar, bikini, peeping tom, peter out, and devil’s advocate. A former Latin teacher, Warren is a gifted poet and a writer of great playfulness. Strange to Say is a cornucopia of joyful learning and laughter. Did you know… Lord Cardigan was a British aristocrat and military man known for the sweater jackets he sported. A lying lawyer might pull the wool over a judge’s eyes―yank his wig down across his face. In the original tale of Cinderella, her slippers were made of vair (“fur”)―which in the orally-told story mistakenly turned into the homonym verre (“glass”). Like laundry, lavender evolved from Italian lavanderia, “things to be washed.” The plant was used as a clothes freshener. It smells better than, say, the misspelled Downy Unstopable with the ad that touts its “feisty freshness,” unaware that feisty evolved from Middle English fisten―fart.
Author: Deborah Warren
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1510779302
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 165
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Book Description
Did you know Thomas Edison proposed to his wife in Morse code? Or that the CIA considered covering Castro’s shoes in thallium to get rid of his iconic beard? The strange facts and foibles of history’s famous figures are divulged in Famous Freaks. The book is a fun, bite sized compendium of the weird and unbelievable. Big names—small disclosures. Important historical data—little to none. This book can be picked up and read anywhere, from any starting point. Skim a section or just peruse a page, but you may find yourself hooked after reading a few of the hilariously strange entries inside. Deborah Warren, whose work has appeared in The New Yorker and The Paris Review, deals out the strange facts of history’s famous with a poetic style and a sense of humor. The collected details, those which history might rather have forgotten, are given their place in the spotlight. Start from the front, but if it’s not your thing, flip around the pages. There are plenty of Famous Freaks inside.
Author: Midge Goldberg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009203606
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 199
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Book Description
Across time and cultures, poets and astronomers have often asked the same questions about outer space, and about ourselves.
Author: Anil
Publisher: Strategic Book Publishing & Rights Agency
ISBN: 1951530535
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 72
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Book Description
As in the first volume of Strange Bedfellows, etymologically related words, most surprisingly so (strange bedfellows), are used to construct amusing and/or amazing pairs, phrases, whole sentences, essays and nonsense stories. Most are accompanied by silly comments, tall tales with recurring characters, poems, fake news and ads. A larger dose of satire than in vol.1 is also included, with a number of Trump send-ups. Again there is a large appendix citing many other etymological surprises.
Author: Charles Harrington Elster
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780156031974
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 308
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Book Description
Presents a humorous look at the English language, including information on word and phrase origins, slang, style, usage, punctuation, and pronunciation.
Author: Simon Hertnon
Publisher: Skyhorse
ISBN: 9781632204530
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 224
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Book Description
Afterwit, agathism, ambsace, anacampserote, antepenultimate, antimony, and more! “When a word perfectly captures a human truth, humans respond to it in the same way that they respond to a beautiful melody. They smile. They nod their heads. They tell others of their discovery.” So says Simon Hertnon in his introduction to Endangered Words, and after wrapping your tongue around the lexical rarities he offers up to his readers, you’ll have to agree! Hertnon provides one hundred hand-selected rarities, and, in a virtuoso display of concinnity, breathes life into them with his lucid descriptions of their meaning and engaging examples of their usage. Perhaps you are an arriviste enjoying a newfound sense of nikhedonia as you demonstrate your sprezzatura in a given subject. Or maybe you are a desipientplutomaniac destined to a life of poshlost. If this doesn’t describe you, then take your pick of the many wonderful words in this book: Omnistrain Trilemma Aporia Or maybe these are all schlimmbesserungs! Thanks to Endangered Words, you no longer have to be at a loss for words or reach for the clichéd and commonplace. The English language is brimming with ambrosial alternatives, and this compendium offers the cream of the crop. Filled with words to be treasured for their elegant precision, from apophenia to zemblanity, Endangered Words is the perfect handbook for writers, an excellent resource for communicators, and an entertaining read for anyone with an appetite for the very brightest gems of the English language.
Author: Mark Forsyth
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0425260798
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 305
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Book Description
This perfect gift for readers, writers, and literature majors alike unearths the quirks of the English language. For example, do you know why a mortgage is literally a “death pledge”? Why guns have girls’ names? Why “salt” is related to “soldier”? Discover the answers to all of these etymological questions and more in this fascinating book for fans of of Eats, Shoots & Leaves. The Etymologicon is a completely unauthorized guide to the strange underpinnings of the English language. It explains how you get from “gruntled” to “disgruntled”; why you are absolutely right to believe that your meager salary barely covers “money for salt”; how the biggest chain of coffee shops in the world connects to whaling in Nantucket; and what, precisely, the Rolling Stones have to do with gardening. This witty book will awake the linguist in you and illuminate the hidden meanings behind common words and phrases, tracing their evolution through all of their surprising paths throughout history.
Author: Julian Jaynes
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547527543
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 580
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Book Description
National Book Award Finalist: “This man’s ideas may be the most influential, not to say controversial, of the second half of the twentieth century.”—Columbus Dispatch At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion—and indeed our future. “Don’t be put off by the academic title of Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Its prose is always lucid and often lyrical…he unfolds his case with the utmost intellectual rigor.”—The New York Times “When Julian Jaynes . . . speculates that until late in the twentieth millennium BC men had no consciousness but were automatically obeying the voices of the gods, we are astounded but compelled to follow this remarkable thesis.”—John Updike, The New Yorker “He is as startling as Freud was in The Interpretation of Dreams, and Jaynes is equally as adept at forcing a new view of known human behavior.”—American Journal of Psychiatry
Author: Anil
Publisher: Strategic Book Publishing & Rights Agency
ISBN: 1951530020
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 70
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Book Description
Etymologically-related words, most surprisingly so (strange bedfellows), are used to construct amusing and/or amazing pairs, phrases and whole sentences, mostly accompanied by silly or satirical comments, tall tales with recurring characters, poems, fake news and fake ads for Dr. Duck’s Dealy Deli. An appendix gives many other pairs of surprisingly related synonyms, antonyms, etc., balanced by the converse - pairs one might expect to be related but are not.
Author: Webb B. Garrison
Publisher: Grant Press
ISBN: 144373182X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 452
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Book Description
Wny You BY WEBB B. GARRISON Illustrated ly Henry R. Martin ABINGDON PRESS NEW YORK NASHVILLE To BRUCE and BEATRICE BLACKMAR GOULD Connoisseurs of Words Foreword Words and phrases are like persons. Some are dull and stodgy, while others are very good company indeed. It is from the ranks of the latter group that the words in this volume have been selected. Interest is the standard which determined whether or not a particular word or phrase should be included. Dedicated though it is to the general reader, it may be used with confidence by persons with special interests. In general, word-histories are developed along lines of standard scholarship. There are a few exceptions accounts based upon tradition. These stories, included because of their interest, are clearly indicated as based upon popular accounts. Much of the material included in this collection was originally pub lished in the popular magazines which are listed on the acknowledg ments page. Final research was done in the Joint University Library, Nashville, Tennessee. Many courtesies were extended by Dr. A. F. Kuhlman, director, and Mrs. Paul L. Wayman, circulation librarian. A Ladies Home Journal reader first suggested that this material should be published in book form. Coming as it did from a reader in the Transvaal, Africa, the suggestion carried much weight though it was not acted upon for some months. Unfortunately, that readers letter has been lost, so it is impossible to give due credit by name. WEBB B. GARJEUSON 7 Acknowledgments Much of the material in this volume was originally published as short features in general and specialized magazines. Special thanks are due editors and publishers of these magazines, both forencouragement in research and for permission to reprint numerous items. Publishers involved, and magazines in which the material was originally pub lished, are listed below Andrus Publishing Co. for cushion, furniture, mahogany, and suite from Furniture Digest. Catholic Digest, Inc., for asylum awful, batiste, bedlam bead cancel, canter, cardinal, to chime in, clerk, crib, diaper, dumbbell, gabardine, helpmate, journal, ledger, lobby, marigold, musical notes noon, polite, primer sign, to a t, and thinking cap from Catholic Digest. Chesapeake and Ohio Railway for caboose, to call on the car pet conductor, crosstie, deadhead, engineer, freight, gon dola, hogger, news butch, spur, station, train, and tun nel from Tracks. Chilton Company, Inc., for boot, heel, last, moccasin, shoe, and sole from Boot and Shoe Recorder. The Curtis Publishing Company for Bible, bigwig, blarney, blue jeans, Blue Monday, bombast, boss, to bring home the bacon, calendar, camera, canary, compact companion, Dixie, doily, to eat ones hat, a feather in ones cap, flower names, fruit names, grass widow, heckle, husband, infan try, lord, to nag patent, salary, soft soap sundae, to 9 WHY YOU SAY IT take with a grain of salt to tie the knot and wife from Ladies Home Journal. Dell Publishing Co., Inc., for serenade from Dell Crossword An nual easel, earshot villain from Dell Crossword Puzzles con template, fanatic, pedigree, zoo from Official Crossword Puzzles and abracadabra, ancient gods anecdote, banquet, bogey, spire from Pocket Crossword Puzzles. Detective World, Inc., for aboveboard, apache, assassin, bobby, carpetbagger, catchpenny, to crib, double cross, fili buster, footpad, gun, gyp, hoax, moll, to pull the woolover ones eyes, to steal thunder, stool pigeon, and thug from Detective World. Farrell Publishing Corp, for apple-pie order etiquette, mil liner, mind your ps and qs, mug, and pin money from The Woman. Father Bakers Homes of Charity for best foot forward boner, chairman, coward, czar, falsehood, to get hep grain, grocer, in the groove, learn by heart, lion, mail, outlaw, parlor, to pay the piper piano, piker, to put a flea in ones ear, to read the riot act, roughneck, shoddy, vandal, and to be at loose ends from The Victorian. Fawcett Publications, Inc...
