ENJOY ANAGRAMS?

Animosity = Is no amity

Mother-in-law = Woman Hitler

Snooze alarms = Alas! No more Z's            

The detectives = Detect thieves                 

There are more on:

http://www.wordsmith.org/anagram/hof.html

Dormitory = Dirty room

New York Times = Monkeys write

Statue of Liberty = Built to stay free

The eyes = They see

A WORD OF WARNING ON DICTIONARIES...

...especially if you are learning English as a foreign language.

  Look up the word “gimlet” in any version of the Oxford dictionary, then compare the definition with that from, say, Collins English Dictionary for Advanced Learners - a standard work.

  They don’t match! The original meaning of “gimlet” as a carpenters’ tool for making small holes in wood has been lost in the Collins dictionary.

  If you need a very good command of English buy an Oxford version as well.

  Otherwise the Collins is great. Rather than the short or synonymic definition it gives an explanation and an example of the word in context. Even the Oxford dictionaries sometimes disagree on the definition or etymology of a word!

Going back to the Collins Advanced Learners dictionary:

It happened to be handy when I wanted to look up “flaccid”. The definition reads:

 “You use flaccid to describe a part of some ones body  when it is unpleasantly soft and not hard or firm.” 

Yeah, at my age that seems very appropriate!

BOOKS  I  HAVE ENJOYED

(Or have used and can recommend.)

A is for Ox:

a short history of the alphabet.

Lyn Davies/Ottakar’s

ISBN 9781845671365

(I don’t know hy the author has changed in the Amazon listing, my copy is definitely credited to Lyn Davies! Weird!)

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The Alphabet

David Sachs/Arrow

ISBN 9780099436829

(Both of the above are different approaches to the history of the so-called Roman alphabet.)

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Coined by Shakespeare

Jeffrey McQuain & Stanley Malless/

Merriam Webster

ISBN 0877793530

(Words and phrases coined or adapted by the bard in his plays, and many are still in use today)

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Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 16th edition

Adrian Room/Cassells

ISBN 9780304350964

(There is a later edition and variations: Modern..., Irish...)

Use on the web at:

http://www.bartleby.com/81/

(You will find out a lot about the origins of many English phrases from this book. Don’t be worried about buying an older, second hand, edition, they are all useful. I own and use half of the 1903 edition , it has items dropped from later ones. I’m still looking for the L-Z. Volume.

Cassells publish a wide range of dictionaries, many for unusual fields)

(I have a bit of a thing about dictionaries anyway, but only own 28 at the moment...)

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Eats, shoots & leaves

Lynne Truss/Profiles Books

ISBN 1861976127

  Have you ever listened to the comedy programme “I’m sorry I haven’t a clue” on BBC Radio 4. If you aren’t living within range of that station and like plays on words, in English, I would very much recommend that you look at the link below for a sample:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/clue/clips/

  Likewise I recommend “The Uxbridge English Dictionary” (yes, that is the correct spelling), published by Harper Collins. It is based on one of the rounds in the above programme. I hope the publishers and the team won’t mind me quoting some of the definitions:

  Discover: a record sleeve

  Impeccable: bird proof

  Marigold: get rich quick

   I’ve been interested in language, philosophy and the communication of meaning for most of my life. Although I like to see good, coherent, concise English written the older versions (Shakespeare etc.)  puns and other plays on words, of any kind, are great fun. 

    “Language is culture, from which customs spring. In it national character is founded. How, for example, could the intrinsic formality of French, the hide-and-seek play of the verb in German, the teeming syllabary ambiguities of the Sino-Japanese, or the mercurial flexibility of English, fail to engender appropriate peculiarities in modes of thinking, consequent mentality and, consequently, ethics?”      Edith Simon, “The Anglo-Saxon Manner.” 1972

“Language most shows a man; speak that I might see thee.” Ben Jonson, 1572 - 1637

HOME

NEED A QUOTATION?

TRY

The Quotations Page

http://www.quotationspage.com/

It full of them!

To translate, select and copy the text and then paste into

BABEL FISH

ENGLISH  is a real mongrel language, which is why it is the most used language in the world, if you take users of all grades of competence. This is in spite of the absolutely crazy spelling and pronunciation  “rules” that it suffers from.

    I suppose that we have the famous Dr Samuel Johnson to blame for some of this. In choosing the words for his dictionary he seems to have had a penchant for Old and Middle English spellings, “plough” rather than “plow”. In Old English every  letter was pronounced, try  saying “thought” like that (except “th” was a single letter originally, “ð” or “Þ”), sort of “tho-ug-h-t”.

   How many words can a language have for one thing? When it is skin in English it can also be hide, pelt or fur. Having several words for one thing does have advantages,it means that poets and authors have a very rich language to chose their words from.  Its probably the most flexible language in the world, but one of the hardest to learn.

Washington Post's Mensa Invitational asks readers to take any word from the dictionary,

alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.

 

Another challenge is to find new definitions for existing words, similar to “The Uxbridge” above.

 

 

Click here to see some winners.