RICHARD LEDERER

Learn the origins of popular phrases in the English language through this exciting book of games perfect for language lovers.Do you know the connection between the expression A HARROWING EXPERIENCE and agriculture, between BY AND LARGE and sailing, between GET YOUR GOAT and horses, or between STEAL YOUR THUNDER and show business?You probably have heard the comparisons HAPPY AS A CLAM, SMART AS A WHIP, PLEASED AS PUNCH, DEAD AS A DOORNAILbut have you ever wondered why a clam should be happy, a whip smart, punch pleased, and a doornail dead?Through the fifty games included in The Play of Words youll discover the answers to these questions as well as hundreds of other semantic delights that repose in our marvelous English language.

Master verbalist Richard Lederer, Americas "Wizard of Idiom"(Denver Post), presents a love letter to the most glorious of human achievements...Welcome to Richard Lederers beguiling celebration of language -- of our ability to utter, write, and receive words. No purists need stop here. Mr. Lederer is no linguistic sheriff organizing posses to hunt down and string up language offenders. Instead, join him "In Praise of English," and discover why the tongue described in Shakespeares day as "of small reatch" has become the most widely spoken language in history:English never rejects a word because of race, creed, or national origin. Did you know that jukebox comes from Gullah and canoe from Haitian Creole?Many of our greatest writers have invented words and bequeathed new expressions to our eveyday conversations. Can you imagine making up almost ten percent of our written vocabulary? Scholars now know that William Shakespeare did just that!He also points out the pitfalls and pratfalls of English. If a man mans a station, what does a woman do? In the "The Department of Redundancy Department,""Is English Prejudiced?" and other essays, Richard Lederer urges us not to abandon that which makes us human: the capacity to distinguish, discriminate, compare, and evaluate.

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 didnt know you could have, the longest words in our dictionaries, and the shortest sentence containing every letter in the alphabet. Youll take a birds-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.

Q. Whats a skeletons favorite food?A. Spare ribs.Q. What was the witchs favorite subject in school?A. Spelling.Q. What kind of horse does a ghost ride?A. A night mare.Q. How does an exorcist keep in