Did you know that ‘Almost’ is the longest word in the English language with all of its letters in alphabetical order ? Or that ‘Stewardesses’ is the longest word you can type solely with your left hand? Or that fireflies aren’t actually flies, they’re beetles? From information about words and their uses, to useful lists of things you never knew had names, palindromes, famous lines from literature and film, bizarre test answers and more, The Weird World of Words is bursting with truly oddball facts about words and language—and will have you hooked from the very first page.
Who knew that the great country of Canada is named for a mistake? How about "bedswerver," the best Elizabethan insult to hurl at a cheating boyfriend? By exploring the delightful back stories of the 250 words in Wordcatcher, readers are lured by language and entangled in etymologies. Author Phil Cousineau takes us on a tour into the obscure territory of word origins with great erudition and endearing curiosity. The English poet W. H. Auden was once asked to teach a poetry class, and when 200 students applied to study with him, he only had room for 20 of them. When asked how he chose his students, he said he picked the ones who actually loved words. So too, with this book — it takes a special wordcatcher to create a treasure chest of remarkable words and their origins, and any word lover will relish the stories that Cousineau has discovered.
A guide to career success for the awkward, the offbeat, the introverted, and anyone who feels like they don’t fit in: “A book as funny as it is wise.” —Rumaan Alam, New York Times–bestselling author of Leave the World Behind As a brand-new employee at a mandatory corporate retreat, Jennifer Romolini—who was afraid of heights—found herself, under pressure, clawing her way to the top of a rope ladder. There, she promptly froze in terror until someone climbed up to help her down. It didn’t seem like an auspicious beginning, but the awkward, anxious, twenty-seven-year-old misfit stayed in the job (where climbing was not actually a required skill), and went on to succeed. She navigated through the New York media industry and became a boss—an editor-in-chief, an editorial director, and a vice president—all within little more than a decade. In this book, she asserts that being outside the norm and achieving high-level success are not mutually exclusive, even if it seems like only office-politicking extroverts are set up for reward. Part career memoir, part real-world guide, Weird in a World That’s Not offers relatable advice on how to achieve your dreams when you feel like you don’t fit in and the odds seem stacked against you. She helps you face your fears, find the right career, and get and keep a job—and offers empathetic, clear-cut answers to important questions: How do I navigate the awkwardness of networking? How do I deal with intense office politics? How do I leave my crappy job? How do I learn how to be a boss, not just a #boss? And, most importantly: How do I do all this and stay true to who I really am? Authentic, funny, and moving, Weird in a World That’s Not will help you tap into your inner tenacity and find your path, no matter how off-the-beaten-path you are.
This title digs deep into forgotten corners of the dictionary, gathering both the most spectacular old and the most impressive new words. The result is more than 400 prime specimens with pronunciations, defined in a conversational style.
Do you know what a snollygoster is? Would you eat something called a muktuk? Do you know anyone who engages in onolatry? Impress your friends and pepper your dinner party conversations with such nuggets as gobemouche, mumpsimus, and cachinnate. You can learn about all of these bizarre and beautiful words and many more in Totally Weird and Wonderful Words. Offering a potpourri of colorful and fascinating words compiled by noted lexicographer Erin McKean, it contains hundreds of definitions, and has been updated to include two new essays, with over 150 words new to this edition. Written in a clear and conversational style, the book contains full-page cartoon illustrations by Roz Chast and Danny Shanahan. Featuring hundreds of words guaranteed to amuse and astonish, this is a book that will appeal to logophiles everywhere. It also features a bibliography of Oxford's dictionaries and a guide to creating your own unusual words correctly from Greek and Latin roots.
An energetic, witty collection of stories where the supernatural meets the anomalies of everyday life--deception, infidelity, lost cats, cute memes, amateur pornography, and more. There are analogies between being female and being left-handed, I think, or being an animal. A woman answers a Craigslist ad (to write erotic diaries for money). A woman walks onto a tennis court (from her home at the bottom of the ocean). A woman goes to the supermarket and meets a friend's husband (who happens to be an immortal demon). A woman goes for a run (and accidentally time travels). Cosmogony takes accounts of so-called normal life and mines them for inconsistencies, deceptions, and delights. Incorporating a virtuosic range of styles and genres (Wikipedia entry, phone call, physics equation, encounters with the supernatural), these stories reveal how the narratives we tell ourselves and believe are inevitably constructed, offering a glimpse of the structures that underlie and apparently determine human existence.
From Lovecraft to Borges to Gaiman, a century of intrepid literary experimentation has created a corpus of dark and strange stories that transcend all known genre boundaries. Together these stories form The Weird, and its practitioners include some of the greatest names in twentieth and twenty-first century literature. Exotic and esoteric, The Weird plunges you into dark domains and brings you face to face with surreal monstrosities. You won't find any elves or wizards here...but you will find the biggest, boldest, and downright most peculiar stories from the last hundred years bound together in the biggest Weird collection ever assembled. The Weird features 110 stories by an all-star cast, from literary legends to international bestsellers to Booker Prize winners: including William Gibson, George R. R. Martin, Stephen King, Angela Carter, Kelly Link, Franz Kafka, China Miéville, Clive Barker, Haruki Murakami, M. R. James, Neil Gaiman, Mervyn Peake, and Michael Chabon. The Weird is the winner of the 2012 World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
TALES OF THE WAR THAT MIGHT HAVE BEENWhat if the United States had gone to war with the Soviet Union? What if these rival superpowers had fought on land, sea, air, and the astral plane? What if the Soviets and Americans had struggled for dominion across parallel dimensions or on the surface of the moon? How would the world have changed? What wonders would have been unveiled? What terrors would have haunted mankind from those dark and dismal dimensions? Come closer, peer through a glass darkly, and discover the horrifying alternative visions of World War III from some of today's greatest minds in science fiction, fantasy, and horror.Includes new stories by David Drake, Brad R. Torgersen, Mike Resnick, Sarah A. Hoyt, and many more!
When parents learn NLP they invariably say, "I wish I knew this stuff as a teenager." In this increasingly confusing, complex and competitive world teenagers need, more than ever, the skills and resources they need to protect themselves while creating the life that they want. This means, Mum and Dad, that they're going to need to learn how to discover what is important to them, learn how to generate their own mental and emotional balance, and learn how to find their own purposes and achieve their own goals. To this end there is no finer set of tools than Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). "Teenagers: Your Essential Guide to the Weird World of... Adults" will show your teenagers how to use language effectively, how to protect themselves from the impositions of others, and how to discover what is most important to them and translate their personal criteria into desirable, personal goals. Any questions? Here's my email - [email protected]
