Catalog Search Results
Author
Publisher
Icon Books
Pub. Date
2021.
Language
English
Description
"The Etymologicon is an occasionally ribald, frequently witty and unerringly erudite guided tour of the secret labyrinth that lurks beneath the English language. What is the actual connection between disgruntled and gruntled? What links church organs to organised crime, California to the Caliphate, or brackets to codpieces? Mark Forsyth's riotous celebration of the idiosyncratic and sometimes absurd connections between words is a classic of its kind....
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
The word bitch conjures many images for many people, but it is most often meant to describe an unpleasant woman. Even before its usage to mean a female canine, bitch didn't refer to gender at all--it originated as a gender-neutral word meaning genitalia. A perfectly innocuous word devolving into a female insult is the case for tons more terms, including hussy--which simply meant housewife--or slut, which meant an untidy person and was also used to...
Author
Publisher
Viking
Pub. Date
[2023]
Language
English
Description
"An enlightening linguistic journey through a thousand years of feminist language - and what we can learn from the vivid vocabulary that English once had for women's bodies, experiences, and sexuality. So many of the words that we use to chronicle women's lives feel awkward or alien. Medical terms are scrupulously accurate but antiseptic. Slang and obscenities have shock value, yet they perpetuate taboos. Where are the plain, honest words for women's...
Author
Publisher
Henry Holt and Co
Pub. Date
2016.
Language
English
Description
"A bestselling linguist takes us on a lively tour of how the English language is evolving before our eyes and why we should embrace this transformation and not fight it. Language is always changing -- but we tend not to like it. We understand that new words must be created for new things, but the way English is spoken today rubs many of us the wrong way. Whether its the use of literally to mean "figuratively" rather than "by the letter" or the way...
Author
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Pub. Date
2012
Language
English
Description
It is said to be the most frequently spoken (or typed) word on the planet, more common than an infant's first word ma or the ever-present beverage Coke. It was even the first word spoken on the moon. It is "OK"--The most ubiquitous and invisible of American expressions, one used countless times every day. Yet few of us know the secret history of OK--how it was coined, what it stood for, and the amazing extent of its influence.
Author
Publisher
W.W. Norton & Company
Pub. Date
[2014]
Language
English
Description
Stanford University professor and MacArthur Fellow Dan Jurafsky peels away the mysteries from the foods we think we know. Thirteen chapters evoke the joy and discovery of reading a menu dotted with the sharp-eyed annotations of a linguist. Jurafsky points out the subtle meanings hidden in filler words like "rich" and "crispy," zeroes in on the metaphors and storytelling tropes we rely on in restaurant reviews, and charts a microuniverse of marketing...
Author
Series
Word travelers volume 2
Language
English
Formats
Description
Eddie and MJ use their awesome enchanted book to journey to Mexico, discover how Mexican culture has influences the English language, learn about local customs, and solve an exciting mystery.
Author
Series
Word travelers volume 1
Accelerated Reader
IL: LG - BL: 5.3 - AR Pts: 1
Language
English
Formats
Description
Eddie and MJ are suddenly transported to India where they must use their word knowledge to solve a mystery and help their new friend Dev save his school.
Author
Language
English
Description
A fun and informative guide to the how and why of proper names and their haphazard entry into common English language by the author of the bestselling Amo, Amas, Amat and More.
Mining the English language to turn up a colorful cast of characters, Eugene Ehrlich finds the historic and literary figures who have given their names to the English language in the interest of keeping it vibrant and their names alive. In What's in a Name? Ehrlich traces...
Author
Language
Español
Description
Al país de los baskos se le llama de muy diversas maneras: País Vasco, Vasconia, Baskonia, País Vasconavarro, Navarra, Euskadi o Euskal Herria, con sus adecuaciones a los diferentes idiomas. Un abanico de nombres muy sugerente pero poco útil para la identificación inequívoca del país.
A ellos hay que añadir los utilizados oficialmente para denominar las tres diferentes administraciones que se asientan en su ámbito antropológico cultural....
Author
Language
English
Description
What do the phrases "pro-life," "intelligent design," and "the war on terror" have in common? Each of them is a name for something that smuggles in a highly charged political opinion. Words and phrases that function in this special way go by many names. Some writers call them "evaluative-descriptive terms." Others talk of "terministic screens" or discuss the way debates are "framed." Author Steven Poole calls them Unspeak. Unspeak represents an attempt...
Author
Language
English
Description
The English language is crammed with colorful phrases and sayings that we use without thinking every day.
It's only when we're asked who smart Alec or Holy Moly were, where feeling 'in the pink' or 'once in a blue moon' come from, or even what letting the cat out of the bag really means that we realize that there's far more to English than we might have thought.
Luckily enough, we now have Albert Jack. And rather than resting on his laurels after...
Author
Language
English
Description
From one of America's top wordsmiths, a lively survey of words from abroad that make English a truly international language.
With dry wit and remarkable erudition, Eugene Ehrlich's You've Got Ketchup on Your Muumuu takes us on an eye-opening tour of our ever-changing language, showing us how English has, throughout its history, seamlessly sewn words from other languages into its original fabric. The language we call our own has in fact been culled...
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