Download or read book Euphemania written by Ralph Keyes and published by Little, Brown Spark. This book was released on 2010-12-14 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did die become kick the bucket, underwear become unmentionables, and having an affair become hiking the Appalachian trail? Originally used to avoid blasphemy, honor taboos, and make nice, euphemisms have become embedded in the fabric of our language. Euphemania traces the origins of euphemisms from a tool of the church to a form of gentility to today's instrument of commercial, political, and postmodern doublespeak. As much social commentary as a book for word lovers, Euphemania is a lively and thought-provoking look at the power of words and our power over them.

Download or read book The Book of Human Emotions written by Tiffany Watt Smith and published by Little, Brown Spark. This book was released on 2016-06-07 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thoughtful, gleeful encyclopedia of emotions, both broad and outrageously specific, from throughout history and around the world. How do you feel today? Is your heart fluttering in anticipation? Your stomach tight with nerves? Are you falling in love? Feeling a bit miffed? Do you have the heebie-jeebies? Are you antsy with iktsuarpok or filled with nakhes? Recent research suggests there are only six basic emotions. But if that makes you feel uneasy, suspicious, and maybe even a little bereft, The Book of Human Emotions is for you. In this unique book, you'll get to travel across the world and through time, learning how different cultures have articulated the human experience and picking up some fascinating new knowledge about yourself along the way. From the familiar (anger) to the foreign (zal), each entertaining and informative alphabetical entry reveals the surprising connections and fascinating facts behind our emotional lives. Whether you're in search of the perfect word to sum up that cozy feeling you get from being inside on a cold winter's night, surrounded by friends and good food (what the Dutch call gezelligheid), or wondering how nostalgia evolved from a fatal illness to enjoyable self-indulgence, Tiffany Watt Smith draws on history, anthropology, science, art, literature, music, and popular culture to find the answers. In reading The Book of Human Emotions, you'll discover feelings you never knew you had (like basorexia, the sudden urge to kiss someone) and gain unexpected insights into why you feel the way you do. Besides, aren't you curious what nginyiwarrarringu means?

Download or read book I Love It When You Talk Retro written by Ralph Keyes and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2009-03-31 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An entertaining and informative book about the fashion and fads of language Today's 18-year-olds may not know who Mrs. Robinson is, where the term "stuck in a groove" comes from, why 1984 was a year unlike any other, how big a bread box is, how to get to Peyton Place, or what the term Watergate refers to. I Love It When You Talk Retro discusses these verbal fossils that remain embedded in our national conversation long after the topic they refer to has galloped off into the sunset. That could be a person (Mrs. Robinson), product (Edsel), past bestseller (Catch-22), radio or TV show (Gangbusters), comic strip (Alphonse and Gaston), or advertisement (Where's the beef?) long forgotten. Such retroterms are words or phrases in current use whose origins lie in our past. Ralph Keyes takes us on an illuminating and engaging tour through the phenomenon that is Retrotalk—a journey, oftentimes along the timelines of American history and the faultlines of culture, that will add to the word-lover's store of trivia and obscure references. "The phrase "drinking the Kool-Aid" is a mystery to young people today, as is "45rpm." Even older folks don't know the origins of "raked over the coals" and "cut to the chase." Keyes (The QuoteVerifier) uses his skill as a sleuth of sources to track what he calls "retrotalk": "a slippery slope of puzzling allusions to past phenomena." He surveys the origins of "verbal fossils" from commercials (Kodak moment), jurisprudence (Twinkie defense), movies (pod people), cartoons (Caspar Milquetoast) and literature (brave new world). Some pop permutations percolated over decades: Radio's Take It or Leave It spawned a catch phrase so popular the program was retitled The $64 Question and later returned as TV's The $64,000 Question. Keyes's own book Is There Life After High School? became both a Broadway musical and a catch phrase. Some entries are self-evident or have speculative origins, but Keyes's nonacademic style and probing research make this both an entertaining read and a valuable reference work." --Publishers Weekly

Download or read book The Hidden History of Coined Words written by Ralph Keyes and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-19 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Oxymoronica written by Dr. Mardy Grothe and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-20 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ox-y-mor-on-i-ca (OK-se-mor-ON-uh-ca) noun, plural: Any variety of tantalizing, self-contradictory statements or observations that on the surface appear false or illogical, but at a deeper level are true, often profoundly true. See also oxymoron, paradox. examples: "Melancholy is the pleasure of being sad." Victor Hugo "To lead the people, walk behind them." Lao-tzu "You'd be surprised how much it coststo look this cheap." Dolly Parton You won't find the word "oxymoronica" in any dictionary (at least not yet) because Dr. Mardy Grothe introduces it to readers in this delightful collection of 1,400 of the most provocative quotations of all time. From ancient thinkers like Confucius, Aristotle, and Saint Augustine to great writers like Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, and G. B. Shaw to modern social observers like Woody Allen and Lily Tomlin, Oxymoronica celebrates the power and beauty of paradoxical thinking. All areas of human activity are explored, including love, sex and romance, politics, the arts, the literary life, and, of course, marriage and family life. The wise and witty observations in this book are as highly entertaining as they are intellectually nourishing and are sure to grab the attention of language lovers everywhere.

Download or read book The Courage to Write written by Ralph Keyes and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2003-10 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published: New York: H. Holt, 1995.

Download or read book The Quote Verifier written by Ralph Keyes and published by St. Martin's Griffin. This book was released on 2007-04-01 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our language is full of hundreds of quotations that are often cited but seldom confirmed. Ralph Keyes's The Quote Verifier considers not only classic misquotes such as "Nice guys finish last," and "Play it again, Sam," but more surprising ones such as "Ain't I a woman?" and "Golf is a good walk spoiled," as well as the origins of popular sayings such as "The opera ain't over till the fat lady sings," "No one washes a rented car," and "Make my day." Keyes's in-depth research routinely confounds widespread assumptions about who said what, where, and when. Organized in easy-to-access dictionary form, The Quote Verifier also contains special sections highlighting commonly misquoted people and genres, such as Yogi Berra and Oscar Wilde, famous last words, and misremembered movie lines. An invaluable resource for not just those with a professional need to quote accurately, but anyone at all who is interested in the roots of words and phrases, The Quote Verifier is not only a fascinating piece of literary sleuthing, but also a great read.

Download or read book Every Word Is a Bird We Teach to Sing written by Daniel Tammet and published by Little, Brown Spark. This book was released on 2017-09-12 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A mind-expanding, deeply humane tour of language by the bestselling author of Born on a Blue Day and Thinking in Numbers. Is vocabulary destiny? Why do clocks "talk" to the Nahua people of Mexico? Will A.I. researchers ever produce true human-machine dialogue? In this mesmerizing collection of essays, Daniel Tammet answers these and many other questions about the intricacy and profound power of language. In Every Word Is a Bird We Teach to Sing, Tammet goes back in time to London to explore the numeric language of his autistic childhood; in Iceland, he learns why the name Blær became a court case; in Canada, he meets one of the world's most accomplished lip readers. He chats with chatbots; contrives an "e"-less essay on lipograms; studies the grammar of the telephone; contemplates the significance of disappearing dialects; and corresponds with native Esperanto speakers - in their mother tongue. A joyous romp through the world of words, letters, stories, and meanings, Every Word Is a Bird We Teach to Sing explores the way communication shapes reality. From the art of translation to the lyricism of sign language, these essays display the stunning range of Tammet's literary and polyglot talents.

Download or read book Unmentionables written by Ralph Keyes and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2010-09-16 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We say a lot about ourselves by what we don't say. Words and phrases like 'collateral damage', 'wardrobe malfunction', 'vertically challenged', and old favourites like 'unmentionables' (trousers, apparently) or 'lady of the night' - all are ways of not using particular words. UNMENTIONABLES is a rollicking exploration of the history of euphemistic usage, looking at how taboos connected to sex, death, religion, war, politics, business and matters of status have produced an extraordinary linguistic creativity, and how euphemistic speech has changed over the centuries. It looks at how euphemisms are born, and how they die (or 'experience a negative outcome') and it explores why it is that we create euphemisms, and the different purposes - from the benign to the sinister - that they serve. (Is 'euphemism' a euphemism for lying?) Lively, entertaining, and crammed with fascinating nuggets of information, UNMENTIONABLES is a celebration of the richness of language. Why have just one word for something when you can have ten other words instead?

Download or read book I Never Knew There Was a Word For It written by Adam Jacot de Boinod and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2010-08-05 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From 'shotclog', a Yorkshire term for a companion only tolerated because he is paying for the drinks, to Albanian having 29 words to describe different kinds of eyebrows, the languages of the world are full of amazing, amusing and illuminating words and expressions that will improve absolutely everybody's quality of life. All they need is this book! This bumper volume gathers all three of Adam Jacot de Boinod's acclaimed books about language - The Wonder of Whiffling, The Meaning of Tingo and Toujours Tingo (their fans include everyone from Stephen Fry to Michael Palin) - into one highly entertaining, keenly priced compendium. As Mariella Frostup said 'You'll never be lost for words again!'

Download or read book The New Art of Capturing Love written by Kathryn Hamm and published by Amphoto Books. This book was released on 2014-05-06 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first guide to posing and sensitively capturing same-sex couples on their big day, The New Art of Capturing Love equips semi-pro and professional wedding photographers to enter the exciting new LGBT wedding photography market. These are exciting times for marriage equality—but capturing memorable LGBTQ portraits requires a novel approach to posing, which until now has been nearly exclusively oriented toward pairing a taller man in black with a smaller woman in white. What works for Jack and Jill won’t necessarily work for Jack and Michael, let alone Jill and Louise. The New Art of Capturing Love shatters the “old standards” of wedding and engagement photography by showing how inappropriate they can be for today’s diverse couples, then shares easy-to-implement poses and techniques that can be applied to any couple (and wedding party), no matter their orientations, to create lasting memories. Featuring a collection of more than 180 same-sex portraits from 46 photographers, this guide is proudly the first—and most comprehensive—of its kind. Whether you are a wedding photographer looking to enter this burgeoning market, or a gay or lesbian couple looking for visual inspiration, these gorgeous images will both instruct and inspire.

Download or read book Nice Guys Finish Seventh written by Ralph Keyes and published by HarperCollins Publishers. This book was released on 1992 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To Keyes, such words voice observations we want made. Freud may never have said, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar," for example, but we certainly wish he had. For a misquote to become familiar it must come from a well-known mouth. Take "You can't trust anyone over thirty." Abbie Hoffman, right? Or was it Jerry Rubin? Mario Salvo? Mark Rudd? All have been given credit for this sixties catchphrase. Keyes discovered that its real originator was a student named Jack.

Download or read book I Never Metaphor I Didn t Like written by Dr. Mardy Grothe and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-06 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The murals in restaurants are on a par with the food in museums. America is an enormous frosted cupcake in the middle of millions of starving people. Critics are like pigs at the pastry cart. Describing something by relating it to another thing is the essence of metaphorical thought. It is one of the oldest activities of humankind—and one of the most impressive when done skillfully. Throughout history, many masters of metaphor have crafted observations that are so spectacular they have taken up a permanent residence in our minds. In I Never Metaphor I Didn't Like, quotation maven Dr. Mardy Grothe fixes his attention on the three superstars of figurative language—analogies, metaphors, and similes. The result is an extraordinary compilation of nearly 2,000 feats of association that will entertain, educate, and occasionally inspire quotation lovers everywhere. In this intellectual smorgasbord, the author of Oxymoronica and Viva la Repartee explains figurative language in a refreshingly down-to-earth way before taking readers on a tour of history's greatest word pictures. In chapters on wit, love, sex, stage and screen, insults, politics, sports, and more, you will find quotations from Aristotle and Maya Angelou to George Washington and Oprah Winfrey.

Download or read book Neverisms written by Dr. Mardy Grothe and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2011-05-17 with total page 525 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Mardy Grothe, the author of Ifferisms,Oxymoronica,and I Never Met a Metaphor IDidn’t Like, comes a new collection of witty and wise quotations about what never to do in life. Remember, “never let the fear of striking out get in your way” (BabeRuth), "never hit anyone if you can help it, but never hit soft"(Theodore Roosevelt); "never be afraid tosit awhile and think" (Lorraine Hansberry); and, of course, neverleave home without the perfect quote for any occasion from Dr. Mardy’s Neverisms.

Download or read book Letters From Perverse University written by L. James Harvey and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2001-02 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does Satan exist? If so, how does he operate? Are good and evil forces in a struggle for the soul of America? Letters from Perverse University answers these questions! Dr. Harvey provides a satirical treatment of contemporary American society that is humorous, and biting, yet profound and informative. The author deals with issues such as homosexuality, abortion, gambling, adultery, criminal justice, evolution, national debt, and a host of other topics. No one escapes the sharp pen of Dr. Harvey including Bill Clinton, professional athletes, the Kennedys, TV evangelists, K-Street bandits, Supreme Court, and the ACLU. Letters from Perverse University is composed of 68 letters and 6 memos from a Professor of Deception and Senior Vice President of Tempters at Perverse University in Hell to some of his former students who have been sent to America to tempt America away from its basic Judeo/Christian values and to destroy it. The book provides a novel and entertaining way to view contemporary social issues. The book makes an excellent vehicle around which to structure discussion and study groups wishing to look at contemporary issues from a Christian perspective.

Download or read book Spinglish written by Henry Beard and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-06-02 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book A Little Book of Language written by David Crystal and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A narrative history of language ranges from the first words of an infant to the modern dialect of text messaging, discussing linguistic styles, the origin of accents, and the search for the first written word.