Crazy English [Paperback]

Richard Lederer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1998

In what other language, asks Lederer, do people drive on a parkway and park in a driveway, and your nose can run and your feet can smell? In CRAZY ENGLISH, Lederer frolics through the logic-boggling byways of our language, discovering the names for phobias you didn't know you could have, the longest words in our dictionaries, and the shortest sentence containing every letter in the alphabet. You'll take a bird's-eye view of our beastly language, feast on a banquet of mushrooming food metaphors, and meet the self-reflecting Doctor Rotcod, destined to speak only in palindromes.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

One of the most unforgettable moments of my youth was learning the word pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. I was in third grade. So what if Richard Lederer has come up with a chemical compound that consists of 1,913 letters? Owning a word like pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is empowering at any age. If you have ever been completely wowed by the power you can have over language, or its power over you, Richard Lederer is your patron saint. His oft-reprinted introduction to Crazy English, which was originally published in 1989, claims that English is "the most loopy and wiggy of all tongues." And then he demonstrates: "In what other language do people drive in a parkway and park in a driveway? ... Why do they call them apartments when they're all together?" And so on. Lederer's pace is frenetic. He alights on oxymorons ("pretty ugly," "computer jock"), redundancies, confusing words (are you sure you know the meaning of enormity?), phobias, contronyms, heteronyms, retroactive terms (acoustic guitar, rotary phone), and a host of other linguistic delights.

Though English may be one of the crazier languages--Lederer claims that about 80 percent of our words are not spelled phonetically--they are all, he says, a little crazy. "That's because language is invented ... by boys and girls and men and women, not computers. As such, language reflects the creative and fearful asymmetry of the human race, which, of course, isn't really a race at all." --Jane Steinberg

From Publishers Weekly

A journalist, teacher at St. Paul's School in Concord, N.H., and public-radio commentator, Lederer ( Anguished English ; Get Thee to a Punnery ) again adroitly mixes instruction with hilarity by showing that English, though the richest and most widely used of all the world's languages, is "crazy." The text is a dazzling collection of anagrams, alliterations, idioms, illogical spelling rules (bough, ghost, honor, rhyme) and larky oxymora (Chaucer's classic "hateful good," today's "military intelligence," "postal service") . Verses, quizzes and anecdotes accompany Lederer's essays on "the antics of semantics," greatly expanding the pleasure of what he correctly claims is "the ultimate joy ride through our language." Doubleday Book Club and Literary Guild alternates; author tour.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Pocket Books; Revised edition (June 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671023233
• ISBN-13: 978-0671023232
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #509,809 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly interesting and amusing commentary about our language, July 7, 2000

By 

J. Lizzi (Costa Mesa, CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Crazy English (Paperback)

Ever pick up a book to look up a fact or check your knowledge on something, and wind up losing track of time? I do that with this book far too often . . . and I never regret it. You can use "Crazy English" as a reference if you like, but what author Richard Lederer does best is make you chuckle at all the oddities of the English language.

This book is literally (ha!) packed with word origins, semantics, "confused" phrases, funny figures of speech, and even categories of words I didn't even know had a name (the "nyms"). The chapter about the doctor who speaks only in palindromes is a classic. Lederer's wit plays right into the theme of the book, and I would bet he had as much fun writing it as I have reading it. No need to start at the beginning; just open to any page and bounce around. It's all great fun, and easy reading.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Crazy English, March 9, 2003

By 

Jon Huska (Davidsville, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Crazy English (Paperback)

Recently I read the book Crazy English by Richard Lederer for a school project. I thought it was a very interesting book and it really did explain why our English language is so crazy. My favorite part of the book was the Tense Times with Verbs secetion. There were very good poems written in this chapter to help explain and give examples of how our language doesn't make sense sometimes. Another good portion of the book is The Sounds of English, it talks about the many different letters that have different sounds and the words that have mute letters, or silent letters. It has a very indepth perspective of many different sounds and why they are spelled and said the way they are. Overall, I thought this was a very educational book and interesting to read.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Crazy and Beautiful !, April 1, 2006

By 

Amazon junkie "Amazon junkie" (Beaverton, OR USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Crazy English (Paperback)

An interesting passage from the book -

Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.

We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend. If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught?

If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell? How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all.

That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

PS. - Why doesn't "Buick" rhyme with "quick"