Download or read book The Dictionary of Wordplay written by Dave Morice and published by Teachers & Writers. This book was released on 2001 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This marvelous reference guide should be at the side of every writer; it's the first wordplay dictionary ever! Concepts like "exquisite corpse," "kangaroo word," and "Jabberwocky," which frequently appear in contemporary writings, are defined here, with examples. More than 1,234 entries are in this book.
Download or read book Wordplay written by Chris Cole and published by Sterling Publishing (NY). This book was released on 1999 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Which words are hardest to rhyme? What word is longer than any other...or shorter? Do you know what a tautonym is or a "head 'n' tail"? if you never thought that language could provide hours of entertainment, these "games" will definitely change your mind -- and sharpen your brain!
Download or read book Crosbie s Dictionary of Puns written by John S. Crosbie and published by Richmond Hill, Ont. : Simon & Schuster of Canada. This book was released on 1972 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book What in the Word written by Charles Harrington Elster and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2005 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a humorous look at the English language, including information on word and phrase origins, slang, style, usage, punctuation, and pronunciation.
Download or read book Cultures and Traditions of Wordplay and Wordplay Research written by Esme Winter-Froemel and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2018-10-22 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume focuses on realisations of wordplay in different cultures and social and historical contexts, and brings together various research traditions of approaching wordplay. Together with the volume DWP 7, it assembles selected papers presented at the interdisciplinary conference The Dynamics of Wordplay / La dynamique du jeu de mots (Trier, 2016) and stresses the inherent dynamicity of wordplay and wordplay research.
Download or read book Word Play written by Gyles Brandreth and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2015-08-06 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'No matter how eloquently a dog may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were poor but honest.' Only words can do that. Words are magic. Words are fun. Join Gyles Brandreth - wit and word-meister, Just A Minute regular, One Show reporter, denizen of Countdown's Dictionary Corner, founder of the National Scrabble Championships, patron of The Queen's English Society, QI, Room 101, Have I Got News For You and Pointless survivor - on an uproarious and unexpected magic carpet ride around the awesome world of words and wordplay. Puns, palindromes, pangrams, Malaprops, euphemisms, mnemonics, acronyms, anagrams, alphabeticals, Tweets, verbiage, verbarrhea - if you can name it, you should find it here, along with the longest, shortest, wittiest, wildest, oldest, latest, oddest, most interesting and most memorable words in the English language - the richest, most remarkable language ever known.
Download or read book Sleeping with the Dictionary written by Harryette Mullen and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2002-02-22 with total page 99 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Harryette Mullen's fifth poetry collection, Sleeping with the Dictionary, is the abecedarian offspring of her collaboration with two of the poet's most seductive writing partners, Roget's Thesaurus and The American Heritage Dictionary. In her ménage à trois with these faithful companions, the poet is aware that while Roget seems obsessed with categories and hierarchies, the American Heritage, whatever its faults, was compiled with the assistance of a democratic usage panel that included black poets Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps, as well as feminist author and editor Gloria Steinem. With its arbitrary yet determinant alphabetical arrangement, its gleeful pursuit of the ludic pleasure of word games (acrostic, anagram, homophone, parody, pun), as well as its reflections on the politics of language and dialect, Mullen's work is serious play. A number of the poems are inspired or influenced by a technique of the international literary avant-garde group Oulipo, a dictionary game called S+7 or N+7. This method of textual transformation--which is used to compose nonsensical travesties reminiscent of Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky"--also creates a kind of automatic poetic discourse. Mullen's parodies reconceive the African American's relation to the English language and Anglophone writing, through textual reproduction, recombining the genetic structure of texts from the Shakespearean sonnet and the fairy tale to airline safety instructions and unsolicited mail. The poet admits to being "licked all over by the English tongue," and the title of this book may remind readers that an intimate partner who also gives language lessons is called, euphemistically, a "pillow dictionary."
Download or read book Word by Word written by Kory Stamper and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-03-06 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “We think of English as a fortress to be defended, but a better analogy is to think of English as a child. We love and nurture it into being, and once it gains gross motor skills, it starts going exactly where we don’t want it to go: it heads right for the goddamned electrical sockets.” With wit and irreverence, lexicographer Kory Stamper cracks open the obsessive world of dictionary writing, from the agonizing decisions about what to define and how to do it to the knotty questions of ever-changing word usage. Filled with fun facts—for example, the first documented usage of “OMG” was in a letter to Winston Churchill—and Stamper’s own stories from the linguistic front lines (including how she became America’s foremost “irregardless” apologist, despite loathing the word), Word by Word is an endlessly entertaining look at the wonderful complexities and eccentricities of the English language.
Download or read book Funny You Should Ask written by Marvin Terban and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1992 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An abundant cache of ideas for using words and wordplay to create engaging riddles and jokes.
Download or read book The Liar s Dictionary written by Eley Williams and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2021-01-05 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “You wouldn’t expect a comic novel about a dictionary to be a thriller too, but this one is. In fact, [it] is also a mystery, love story (two of them) and cliffhanging melodrama.” —The New York Times Book Review An award-winning novel that chronicles the charming misadventures of a lovelorn Victorian lexicographer and the young woman put on his trail a century later to root out his misdeeds while confronting questions of her own sexuality and place in the world. Mountweazel n. the phenomenon of false entries within dictionaries and works of reference. Often used as a safeguard against copyright infringement. In the final year of the nineteenth century, Peter Winceworth is toiling away at the letter S for Swansby’s multivolume Encyclopaedic Dictionary. But his disaffection with his colleagues compels him to assert some individual purpose and artistic freedom, and he begins inserting unauthorized, fictitious entries. In the present day, Mallory, the publisher’s young intern, starts to uncover these mountweazels in the process of digitization and through them senses their creator’s motivations, hopes, and desires. More pressingly, she’s also been contending with a threatening, anonymous caller who wants Swansby’s staff to “burn in hell.” As these two narratives coalesce, Winceworth and Mallory, separated by one hundred years, must discover how to negotiate the complexities of life’s often untrustworthy, hoax-strewn, and undefinable path. An exhilarating, laugh-out-loud debut, The Liar’s Dictionary celebrates the rigidity, fragility, absurdity, and joy of language while peering into questions of identity and finding one’s place in the world.
Download or read book Quicktionary written by and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Dictionary of Difficult Words written by Jane Solomon and published by Frances Lincoln Children's Books. This book was released on 2019-05-02 with total page 115 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is a moonbow? What does it mean when someone absquatulates? Over 400 words to amaze, confuse and inspiring budding wordsmiths (and adults!).
Download or read book Away with Words written by Joe Berkowitz and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-06-13 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "[Away with Words] is low wit in its highest form. . . Mr. Berkowitz is sensitive throughout to the evanescence and contingency of punning and to the fleeting chemistry of a live pun-on-pun matchup crackling with energy." –Wall Street Journal Fast Company reporter Joe Berkowitz investigates the bizarre and hilarious world of pun competitions from the Punderdome 3000 in Brooklyn to the World competition in Austin. When Joe Berkowitz witnessed his first Punderdome competition, it felt wrong in the best way. Something impossible seemed to be happening. The kinds of jokes we learn to repress through social conditioning were not only being aired out in public—they were being applauded. As it turned out, this monthly show was part of a subculture that’s been around in one form or another since at least the late ‘70s. Its pinnacle is the O. Henry Pun Off World Championship, an annual tournament in Austin, Texas. As someone who is terminally self-conscious, Joe was both awed and jealous of these people who confidently killed with the most maligned form of humor. In this immersive ride into the subversive world of pun competitions, we meet punsters weird and wonderful and Berkowitz is our tour guide. Puns may show up in life in subtle ways sometimes, but once you start thinking in puns you discover they’re everywhere. Berkowitz’s search to discover who makes them the most, and why, leads him to the professional comedian competitors on @Midnight, a TV show with a pun competition built into it, the writing staff of Bob’s Burgers, the punniest show on TV, and even a humor research conference. With his new unlikely band of punster brothers, he finally heads to Austin to compete in the World Championship. Of course, in befriending these comic misfits he also ended up learning that when you embrace puns you become a more authentic version of yourself.
Download or read book The Devil s Dictionary written by Ambrose Bierce and published by Standard Ebooks. This book was released on 2021-03-16T22:46:04Z with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “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.
Download or read book David Astle s Gargantuan Book of Words written by David Astle and published by . This book was released on 2017-09-27 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Packed full of puzzles, quizzes and fun facts - along with heaps of funny drawings and appealing activities - this is the perfect book for kids aged 8 and above. A wordplay puzzle book from the wordplay master!
Download or read book The Great Dictionary Caper written by Judy Sierra and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-01-23 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Teachers will have field day with this wordplay; this caper is clever, capricious, and cunning.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Bored with sitting in a dictionary ‘day in, day out,’ the words make a break for it and organize a parade which…introduce linguistics terminology in just about the most playful way possible.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “This is a charming, peppy introduction, enhanced by Comstock’s energetic, retro-flair illustrations, which fill the pages with cavorting words and creative details…In approach and format, this is both entertaining and educational—likely to hold and pique kids’ interest in the topic and provide a fun learning supplement.” —Booklist (starred review) When all of the words escape from the dictionary, it’s up to Noah Webster to restore alphabetical order in this supremely wacky picture book that celebrates language. Words have secret lives. On a quiet afternoon the words escape the dictionary (much to the consternation of Mr. Noah Webster) and flock to Hollywood for a huge annual event—Lexi-Con. Liberated from the pages, words get together with friends and relations in groups including an onomatopoeia marching band, the palindrome family reunion, and hide-and-seek antonyms. It’s all great fun until the words disagree and begin to fall apart. Can Noah Webster step in to restore order before the dictionary is disorganized forever?
Download or read book Wordplay written by John Langdon and published by Random House. This book was released on 2005 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Award-winning graphic designer John Langdon was perhaps the first practitioner of the art of ambigrams. In this updated edition he adds a significant amount of new material to further enhance the reader's enjoyment of the peculiar illusion created when a word can be read right-side up and upside down.
