The Revenge of Anguished English: More Accidental Assaults Upon Our Language [Hardcover]

Richard Lederer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 10, 2005

Richard Lederer has been called Attila the Pun, Conan the Grammarian, and the Viceroy of Verbivores. In The Revenge of Anguished English, this "Abbot of Absurdity" (as People magazine has dubbed him) leaves us limp with laughter at how the innocent, the negligent, and the pompous mangle the English language. True to the code of this super-duper blooper snooper, all the fluffs and flubs, goofs and gaffes, and blunders, botches, boo-boos, and bloopers are genuine, authentic, certified, and unretouched. Nothing has been made up!

* Student blooper: The four gospels are written by John, Paul, George, and that other guy.
* Science blooper: Elephants eat roots, leaves, grasses, and sometimes bark.
* In a church bulletin: Attend and you will hear an excellent speaker and heave a healthy lunch.
* A headline howler: DENVER CHAPTER WILL HAVE SENATOR FOR BREAKFAST
* On a frozen food package: Defrost your frozen food before eating.
* Misplaced modifier: Children should not drive golf carts under the age of sixteen.
* Spelling error: The driver of the car was cited for wreckless driving.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Fourth in the Anguished English series (The Bride of Anguished English, More Anguished English, etc.), Lederer's newest collection of grammatical goofs will elicit laughs from start to finish. Cataloguing the hilarious ways in which people mangle the English language, Lederer offers hundreds of new linguistic blunders, from infamous "Bushisms" to poorly worded newspaper headlines. Children, in early experiments with language and logic, utter some of the funniest foul-ups. For example, as a mother desperately pounds catsup out of a bottle, her four-year-old answers the phone and says, "Mommy can't come to the phone to talk to you right now. She's hitting the bottle." In another instance, a mother asks her child what she learned on the first day of school, and the child's reply is: "Not enough. They say I have to go back tomorrow." In addition to these "kiddisms," the book touches upon more adult humor, as in a headline that reads: "Soviet Virgin Lands Short of Goal Again." Complete with ridiculously obvious product warnings, church bulletin bloopers and celebrities caught saying the wrong things, this book celebrates the English language by allowing readers to laugh at others' amusing mistakes. 30 b&w line drawings.

From Booklist

Prolific author Lederer has written many language books; this title is part of his ongoing humorous series that began with Anguished English (1987). The book is divided into five sections (each containing from three to five short chapters) covering the funny mistakes made by children, gaffes committed by the famous, botched newspaper headlines and stories, translation problems, and grammatical errors. Each chapter ends with Hall of Fame examples of the topic under discussion. Malapropisms, misplaced modifiers, and unintentionally funny typos are all here, and in between chuckles, readers are sure to learn plenty about proper sentence structure. However, Lederer leads off with what may be the funniest section in the book when he recounts kids' mistakes, especially the student bloopers ("The four gospels were written by John, Paul, George, and that other guy"). The book is so chock-full of humorous examples that readers are bound to laugh at least once per page. Everyone makes mistakes--why are they so much funnier when they are someone else's? Lederer seems to know the answer to that one. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1st edition (March 10, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312334931
• ISBN-13: 978-0312334932
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,384,802 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars If you make fun of others' English, yours had better be perfect..., July 24, 2005

By 

Debbie the Book Devourer "dletour7" (Waltham, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Revenge of Anguished English: More Accidental Assaults Upon Our Language (Hardcover)

This book is a collection of gaffes, puns (mostly unintentional), unfortunate typos, syntactical snafus, kids' use of language, and translational traps. Some of the examples are riotously funny; others are just so-so. Sometimes the number of examples overwhelms the brain's ability to appreciate them. The introductions by Lederer before each chapter are cleverly written, but sometimes too much so. (Example: "Here's a sampling of English terrors and tinglish errors, the blood and thunder and thud and blunder...") Ugh.

Finally, if you're going to make fun of English gaffes you find elsewhere, you'd better have a cadre of editors to make sure none of your prose contains errors. This sentence, written by Lederer, poked me right in the eye: "It is sometimes said that if something is perfectly true, then it's exact opposite must also be perfectly true." Apostrophe abuse!

Still, it was a very funny book, especially for a word nerd such as myself. I definitely intend to look for Lederer's earlier works. I love this stuff!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book had me laughing from the very first page!, June 23, 2005

By 

Blaine Greenfield "eclectic reader" (Belle Meade, NJ) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Revenge of Anguished English: More Accidental Assaults Upon Our Language (Hardcover)

Unfortunately, none of the local papers carry a column, "Looking at Language," by Richard Lederer . . . it is something that I'd definitely want to read--especially after enjoying his
very funny book, THE REVENGE OF ANGUISHED ENGLISH.

In it, he takes actual misuses of the English language and presents them in a series of short chapters that had me laughing from the very first page . . . I never realized that there were so many fluffs and flubs, goofs and gaffes, blunders, botches, boo-boos, and bloopers that are actually run as the gospel, seemingly on a daily basis.

They have been issued by students, run in church bulletins, appeared on frozen food packages, and run in newspapers as headlines.

The tough part in writing this review was to choose just a few examples that I could share, in that there were so many . . . among them:

* On the JOEY BISHOP SHOW, Joey asked Sen. Barry Goldwater if he would like to be on the show twice a week. The senator answered, "I'd much rather watch you in bed with my wife."

* Attending a wedding for the first time, a little girl whispered to her mother, "Why is the bride dressed in white?"

"Because white is the color of happiness, and today is the happiest day of her life."

The child thought about this for a moment, then said, "So why is the groom wearing black?"

* [from the Excuses Hall of Fame]
My son is under the doctor's care. Please execute him.
Please excuse Mary for being absent. She was sick, and I had her shot.
Please excuse Jimmy for being. If was his father's fault.
Please excuse Tom for being absent yesterday. He had diarrhea,
and his boots leak.
Maryann was absent December 11-16 because she had a fever,
sore throat, headache, and upset stomach. Her sister was also sick--fever and sore throat--and her brother had a low-grade fever and ached all over. I wasn't the best either--sore throat and fever. There must be the flu going around school. Her father even got hot last night.

[court Q-and-A]
Q: Where do you live?
A: 2442 Oseawotamire Street
Q: How do you spell that street?
A: S-T-R-E-E-T

* In one edition of today's food section, an inaccurate number of jalapeno peppers was given for Jeanette Crowley's southwestern chicken salad recipe. The Recipe should call for 2, not 21, jalapeno peppers.

* Lost dog-mixed breed, shaggy, left front leg amputated, missing top of right ear, partially blind, tail was broken and healed crooked, some teeth gone, scars on head and back, has been castrated. Answers to name of Lucky

* Spoken by a Los Angeles radio DJ shortly after the 1990 earthquake:
The telephone company is urging people to please not use the telephone unless it is absolutely necessary in order to keep the lines open for emergency personnel. We'll be right back after this break to give away a pair of Phil Collins concert tickets to caller number 95.

I'm still laughing at these so much that I'm now going to get hold of Lederer's first book on the same topic, ANGUISHED ENGLISH.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars accidental assualts on the english language, February 11, 2007

By 

Shemogue (New Brunswick) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Revenge of Anguished English: More Accidental Assaults Upon Our Language (Hardcover)

This is a gut wrenching (in the sense that my stomach ached from laughter after reading it) collection of grammatical errors, linguistic bloopers, slip ups, faux pas, mixed metaphors, mis-translations, Freudian slips, malapropisms and other gaffes and misunderstandings from the schoolroom, the courts, political speeches, the doctor's office, warning labels and instructions, advertisements, church bulletins, headlines, and worst of all, the media, who as the author points out, are professionals and should know better.

Here are some samples:
The Court: The charge here is the theft of frozen chickens. Are you the defendant?
Defendant: No sir, I'm the guy who stole the chickens.
From students' test papers: All Gaul is quartered unto three halves.
Christopher Columbus discovered America while cursing about the Atlantic on the Nina, the Pintacolada and the Santa Fe.
Someone who runs for an office he already holds is called an incompetent.
The four gospels were written by John, Paul, George and that other guy.
Parent's note to teacher: Please excuse Tom for being absent yesterday. He had diarrhea, and his boots leak.
From a church bulletin: We are sorry to announce that Mr Albert Brown has been quite unwell, owing to his recent death and is taking a short holiday to recover.

My personal favourite is the correction of an error of high tide times published in an Australian coastal town newspaper, but you'll have to read the book to get the joke.

If you have not yet encountered the humorous works of Richard Lederer, you don't know what you've been missing. If you have read his earlier books, then this is more of the same insane hilarity. In either case, waste no time getting your hands on this book and prepare for an assault on your funny-bone.