Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #186588 in Books
• Published on: 2001-10-17
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 372 pages

Amazon.com
Verbatim, says the language quarterly's editor, Erin McKean, is "a magazine about all of the fun parts of English and linguistics, written for people who don't necessarily have a Ph.D." This collection of pieces culled from the quarterly is like a candy shop for word lovers. John Tittensor writes about unfortunate last names, Philip Michael Cohen discloses the secret lingo of tiddlywinks players, Pete May explores British football chants, and Jesse Sheidlower reports on the revising of his book The F-Word. Steve Bonner considers "the language as it will never be used," dreaming up evocative word combinations so unlikely that they'd never be uttered: "rotating strawberry madonna," "angry tuba gravy." McKean claims to like "that 'bad English' exists." She also maintains that one should resist correcting the grammar of others. "The easiest way to put your own utterances under intense scrutiny," she warns, "is to toss off a thoughtless public correction of someone else's." --Jane Steinberg

From Publishers Weekly
For lovers of the intricacies of language comes an anthology of the best writing from Verbatim: The Language Quarterly, which has been investigating, debating, and dissecting English for almost 30 years. Erin McKean, the magazine's editor since 1997, has collected lively essays on popular linguistics, dictionaries and the men and women who make them, English etymology and usage, and, of course, obscenity. From a consideration of "student bloopers" to a disquisition on the nature of slang, these thoughtful and often humorous offerings provide insight into the sophisticated systems of human communication in language that's appropriately fresh and, thankfully, jargon-free.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
For over 25 years, Verbatim: A Language Quarterly has been publishing short articles on the use and misuse of language. Here, McKean, editor of Verbatim and a dictionary editor for Oxford University Press, compiles 58 articles from the quarterly on subjects ranging from the meanings of the "F word" to variants in Bible translations. In between, various authors discuss other languages (Welsh dictionaries, Quebe ois Gallicisms, Spanish variations in South America), word games (puns, spoonerisms), jokes (student bloopers, matching wordplay, Irish bulls), jargon (clown talk, S & M terminology, sports slang), and much, much more. McKean has used the work of well-known linguists and journalists (Laurence Urdang, Richard Lederer, and Gerald Eskenazi), but most of the pieces are by unknowns who submitted interesting language observations. All the articles are well written, but some will be more interesting than others. Recommended for public libraries. Kitty Chen Dean, Nassau Coll., Garden City, NY
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

A lollapalooza for wordlovers
God, I love this book! Where else are you going to find a fascinating exegesis of the use of slang in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a discussion of the specific nuances of language within the S/M community, and a discussion of dirty words down the centuries in a single volume? Buy a copy for yourself and several more for your friends who like to explore the back alleys of language.

A disappointment
I bought this book because I saw a review by Michael Quinion (www.worldwidewords.org). Although I enjoyed many of the essays in the book, the book was so poorly organized, I found myself very frustrated while reading it. Just a few editorial changes would have greatly improved it. It should have an index. The essays should be identified by the date they were published in the quarterly. Short intros to each essay providing some context and updating of the subject matter, as appropriate, would have made a big impact with a small amount of work on the part of the editor.

So much fun that you'll want to read it quarterly..
A friend of mine, knowing I'm a student of linguistics, lent me this book, and I'm glad she did; it was one of the most fun, yet relaxing, books I've read in some time. The majority of the essays are funny, and those that aren't are at least interesting (though I confess that there were a few of them I simply didn't care for, it was more than made up for by the others.) The format makes it perfect for short bursts of recreation, especially if you just have a bit of time to kill on the bus or while waiting for something.. it's an excellent book to be read in pieces (and would make a good "bathroom book", come to think of it.) Like other reviewers here, I enjoyed this book so much that I decided to subscribe to the periodical, and I would recommend it to linguists, grammarians and anyone else who enjoys language.