CRAZY ENGLISH: The Ultimate Joy Ride Through Our Language

by Richard Lederer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1989

Lederer, a New Hampshire schoolteacher and ""Grammar Grappler"" columnist for Writer's Digest, loves the language and here pays humorous honor to its oddities and beauties, from the longest word (a 1,913-lettered amino acid) to why ""-ash"" verbs (bash, clash, gash, etc.) invariably define violent actions (the answer lies in onomatopoetics). There's much whimsy here--why, Lederer wonders, do we say ""a near miss"" when we mean ""a near hit?""; why, if the plural of mouse is mice, isn't the plural of henhouse, ""henhice""?--and some useful information, too--a dictionary of ""nyms"" (e.g., antonym, ""A part of the body used as a verb: to toe the line""), a list of phobias (""if you despise eating spinach or broccoli, you are a lachanophobe""). Plenty of fun, then, for all wordsmiths and word-fanciers; and you get to read about the non-English-speaking foreign couple who named their newborn after ""the most beautiful English world they had ever heard"": diarrhea.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1989

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1989

Categories: NONFICTION