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Product Description
Experience the Dark Side of the English Language
Experience the Dark Side of the English Language
What sensitivities are you secretly offending when you use the words poppycock, bonfire, and porcelain? What political incorrectness are you courting when you describe someone or something as ethnic? Who have you insulted, what sensitivity have you jostled, what breach of propriety have you committed when you use such remarkably innocent words as butterfly, gymnasium, and fizzle?
Unfortunate English uncovers older meanings of words that are out of joint with almost everyone's sense of propriety--word histories that reveal the deintensification of the disgusting, the generalization of the ribald, the mutation of the offensive, and occasionally the sensationalizing of the innocent.
So open the book and start having fun ... or maybe you shouldn't, considering that fun originally meant ... well, something different.
About the Author
Bill Brohaugh is the author of Write Tight, about concision in writing (ISI Books), and The Grill of Victory, a profile of the competition barbecue circuit (Emmis Books). For Writer's Digest Books, he is the author or editor of Professional Etiquette for Writers, English Through the Ages and Just Open a Vein. He has written several hundred published or produced magazine articles and short radio pieces. He can spell "eclectic."
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Inside This Book
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Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs):
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dogged person Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Old French, Late Middle English New!
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
dogged person Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Old French, Late Middle English New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 32
books:
See all 32 books this book cites
- Word Origins by John Ayto in Front Matter, and Back Matter
- A History of English in Its Own Words by Craig M. Carver on page 113, and Back Matter
- Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson on page 47, and Back Matter
- Dictionary of Word Origins: Histories of More Than 8,000 English-Language Words by John Ayto in Front Matter, and Back Matter
- Doc Holliday by Paul West on page 19
See all 32 books this book cites
What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?
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56% buy the item featured on this page: Unfortunate English: The Gloomy Truth Behind the Words You Use $14.81 |
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18% buy The Dord, the Diglot, and an Avocado or Two: The Hidden Lives and Strange Origins of Common and Not-So-Common Words $5.20 |
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13% buy Ballyhoo, Buckaroo, and Spuds: Ingenious Tales of Words and Their Origins $11.66 |
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13% buy Gallimaufry: A Hodgepodge of Our Vanishing Vocabulary $11.53 |
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