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Author: Paul Anthony Jones
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1681775859
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 209
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Book Description
Our everyday language is full of surprises; its origins are stranger than you might think. Any word might be knocked and buffeted, subjected to twists and turns, expansions and contractions, happy and unhappy accidents. There are intriguing tales behind even the most familiar terms, and they can say as much about the present as they do the past.Busking, for instance, originally meant piracy. Grin meant to snarl. A bimbo was a man; nice meant ignorant; glamor was magic; and a cupboard was a table. Buxom used to mean obedient; a cloud was a rock; raunchy originally meant dirty.Focusing on one hundred surprising threads in the evolution of English, The Accidental Dictionary reveals the etymological origins and quirky developments that have led to the meanings we take for granted today. It is a weird and wonderful journey into words.
Author: Paul Anthony Jones
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781783964383
Category : English language
Languages : en
Pages : 224
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Book Description
Brimming with hidden histories and tantalising twists, The Accidental Dictionary tells the extraordinary stories behind ordinary words. Our everyday language is full of surprises; its origins are stranger than you might think. Any word might be knocked and buffeted, subjected to twists and turns, expansions and contractions, happy and unhappy accidents. There are intriguing tales behind even the most familiar terms, and they can say as much about the present as they do the past. Busking, for instance, originally meant piracy. Grin meant to snarl. A bimbo was a man, nice meant ignorant, glamour was magic and a cupboard was a table... Focusing on 100 surprising threads in the evolution of English, The Accidental Dictionary reveals the etymological origins and quirky developments that have led to the meanings we take for granted today. It is a weird and wonderful journey into words. "A real delight ... hidden gems nestle on every page" -- JaffaReadsToo "The Accidental Dictionary is certainly worth adding [to a bookshelf]... I knew very few of these, which is a good thing, and now I know more, which is a better one" -- Marcus Berkmann, Spectator Christmas books 2016
Author: Paul Anthony Jones
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1681775859
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 209
Get Book Here
Book Description
Our everyday language is full of surprises; its origins are stranger than you might think. Any word might be knocked and buffeted, subjected to twists and turns, expansions and contractions, happy and unhappy accidents. There are intriguing tales behind even the most familiar terms, and they can say as much about the present as they do the past.Busking, for instance, originally meant piracy. Grin meant to snarl. A bimbo was a man; nice meant ignorant; glamor was magic; and a cupboard was a table. Buxom used to mean obedient; a cloud was a rock; raunchy originally meant dirty.Focusing on one hundred surprising threads in the evolution of English, The Accidental Dictionary reveals the etymological origins and quirky developments that have led to the meanings we take for granted today. It is a weird and wonderful journey into words.
Author: Eugene Ehrlich
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061746797
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 288
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Book Description
Between TV talk shows, radio call-in programs, email and the Internet, spontaneous-talk media has skyrocketed in the '90s. People are interacting more frequently and more fervently than ever before, turning the English language into an indecipherable mess. Now, this unique and concise compendium presents the most confused and misused words in the language today -- words misused by careless speakers and writers everywhere. It defines, discerns and distinguishes the finer points of sense and meaning. Was it fortuitous or only fortunate? Are you trying to remember, or more fully recollect? Is he uninterested or disinterested? Is it healthful or healthy, regretful or regrettable, notorious or infamous? The answers to these and many more fascinating etymological questions can be found within the pages of this invaluable (or is it valuable?) reference.
Author: David Evans
Publisher: Black Dog Pub Limited
ISBN: 9781907317491
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 189
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Book Description
"Critical Dictionary is an ambitious cornucopia of thoughts, images, and illustrations from online art magazine criticaldictionary.com. Inspired by Georges Bataille's critical dictionary, the project strives to declassify terms in a playful manner emphasising the open-ended, the provisional and the unfinished nature of language. The title alludes to the mock dictionary that Georges Bataille edited for Documents in 1929 and 1930. Like its famous precedent from Georges Bataille, Critical Dictionary aims to puncture pretension, bringing words and their referents down to earth using a playful manner to declassify or undefine terms. Abandoning the conventional approach of dictionaries and their solely supportive use of imagery, Critical Dictionary allows images to act progressively and many of the entries are illustrated by several examples leading to an evolving discussion on interpretation. Critical Dictionary includes contributions from artists, illustrators and photographers including Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, David Campany, Common Culture, Karen Knorr, Ann Lee, Jake Walters and Penelope Umbrico. Entries include Accident, Civilization, Drone, Error, Fragment, Informe, Metaphor, Monument: Mycelium, Portrait, Quotation, Retort, Smell, Touch, Umfunktionierung, Voice, Wander, XXX and Zoo. Critical Dictionary provides a thought provoking take on language and preconception through unique imagery and the playful re-organisation of texts and images."--Site Web de l'éditeur.
Author: Paul Anthony Jones
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022664670X
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 385
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Book Description
Open The Cabinet of Linguistic Curiosities and you’ll find both a word and a day to remember, every day of the year. Each day has its own dedicated entry, on which a curious or notable event—and an equally curious or notable word—are explored. On the day on which flirting was banned in New York City, for instance, you’ll discover why to “sheep’s-eye” someone once meant to look at them amorously. On the day on which a disillusioned San Franciscan declared himself Emperor of the United States, you’ll find the word “mamamouchi,” a term for people who consider themselves more important than they truly are. And on the day on which George Frideric Handel completed his 259-page Messiah after twenty-four days of frenzied work, you’ll see why a French loanword, literally meaning “a small wooden barrow,” is used to refer to an intense period of work undertaken to meet a deadline. The English language is vast enough to supply us with a word for every occasion—and this linguistic “wunderkammer” is here to prove precisely that. So whatever date this book has found its way into your hands, there’s an entire year’s worth of linguistic curiosities waiting to be found.
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.
Author: Paul Anthony Jones
Publisher: Summersdale
ISBN: 0857658158
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 325
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Book Description
From a Scottish waterfall three times the height of Niagara Falls to the last foreign invasion of Britain, The British Isles: A Trivia Gazetteer brings together hundreds of remarkable facts concerning different locations across Britain and Ireland. An As much an accessible and informative reference book as it is an entertaining miscellany.
Author: Vincent Jefferds
Publisher: ABRAMS
ISBN: 9780810981805
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 100
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Book Description
A treat for young children just learning the alphabet as well as for older children learning to read, "The Amazing ABC Book" is a colorful delight. Bright letters and fun pictures illustrate each letter of the alphabet, from A for Accordion to Z for Zebra. And every word is offered in three languages: English, French, and German. Full color.
Author: Henry Beard
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0399172394
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 370
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Book Description
Spinglish—the devious dialect of English used by professional spin doctors—is all around us. And the fact is, until you’ve mastered it, politicians and corporations (not to mention your colleagues and friends) will continue putting things over on you, and generally getting the better of you, every minute of every day—without your even knowing it. However, once you perfect the art of terminological inexactitude, you’ll be the one manipulating and one-upping everyone else! And here’s the beauty part: Henry Beard and Christopher Cerf, authors of the New York Times semi-bestseller The Official Politically Correct Dictionary and Handbook, have compiled this handy yet astonishingly comprehensive lexicon and translation guide—a fictionary, if you will—to help you do just that. If you want to succeed in business (or politics, sports, the arts, or life in general) without really lying, this is the book for you! (Your results may vary.) Spinglish includes these nifty bits of spurious verbiage and over a thousand more: aesthetic procedure – face-lift dairy nutrients – cow manure enhanced interrogation techniques – torture “For your convenience.” – “For our convenience.” hands-on mentoring – sexual relations with a junior employee incomplete success – failure rightsizing – firing people zero-tasking – doing nothing With each and every entry sourced from some of the greatest real-life language benders in the world today, you’re virtually guaranteed to have the perfectly chosen tried-and-untrue term right at the tip of your forked tongue. Wish you could nimbly sidestep a question without batting an eye? Not sure how to apologize while also . . . not apologizing? Spinglish has you covered. Simply consult this convenient, shoot-from-the-lip glossary, and before you know it, you’ll be telling it like it isn’t, it wasn’t, and it couldn’t ever have been.
Author: Ambrose Bierce
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 341
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Book Description
“Dictionary, n: A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work.” Bierce’s groundbreaking Devil’s Dictionary had a complex publication history. Started in the mid-1800s as an irregular column in Californian newspapers under various titles, he gradually refined the new-at-the-time idea of an irreverent set of glossary-like definitions. The final name, as we see it titled in this work, did not appear until an 1881 column published in the periodical The San Francisco Illustrated Wasp. There were no publications of the complete glossary in the 1800s. Not until 1906 did a portion of Bierce’s collection get published by Doubleday, under the name The Cynic’s Word Book—the publisher not wanting to use the word “Devil” in the title, to the great disappointment of the author. The 1906 word book only went from A to L, however, and the remainder was never released under the compromised title. In 1911 the Devil’s Dictionary as we know it was published in complete form as part of Bierce’s collected works (volume 7 of 12), including the remainder of the definitions from M to Z. It has been republished a number of times, including more recent efforts where older definitions from his columns that never made it into the original book were included. Due to the complex nature of copyright, some of those found definitions have unclear public domain status and were not included. This edition of the book includes, however, a set of definitions attributed to his one-and-only “Demon’s Dictionary” column, including Bierce’s classic definition of A: “the first letter in every properly constructed alphabet.” Bierce enjoyed “quoting” his pseudonyms in his work. Most of the poetry, dramatic scenes and stories in this book attributed to others were self-authored and do not exist outside of this work. This includes the prolific Father Gassalasca Jape, whom he thanks in the preface—“jape” of course having the definition: “a practical joke.” This book is a product of its time and must be approached as such. Many of the definitions hold up well today, but some might be considered less palatable by modern readers. Regardless, the book’s humorous style is a valuable snapshot of American culture from past centuries. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.
