The Secret Life of the English Language: Buttering Parsnips, Twocking Chavs

by Martin H. Manser, David Pickering (Editor)

“Fine words butter no parsnips” is an expression dating back 400 years. Twocking and chav are popular new arrivals in the ever-growing vocabulary of British slang. What do words and phrases like these have in common, and what sets them apart? That’s what this fascinating book sets out to explore. Along the way, it illuminates the whole process of word formation and proliferation. How are new words and phrases born? What’s special about the ones that enter common usage? How do mistakes and jokes affect a word’s career? Why do some words die, never to be used again? With examples ranging from Shakespeare to text messaging, this is a browsable collection rich with amusing quotations, unusual anecdotes, and clever wordplay.

Genres: Language, Nonfiction, Writing

271 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2007

About the author

Martin Manser is a professional reference-book editor. Since 1980 he has compiled or edited nearly 200 reference books. He has also compiled and edited many titles that encourage Bible reading.

Reviews

[Hannah · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5 stars

Felt like a very lazy, hastily thrown together book, with some lists that seem to have been sourced from popular humour instead of actually researched (the section on estate agents and second-hand car salespeople, especially), and some that had little to do with the English Language (the names of pets owned by famous people, for example). There were occasional interesting sections, but they couldn't change the fact that this was too long to be a coffee-table book to glance through, but has too little substance to be able to read at length.

[Love of Hopeless Causes · Rating 1 out of 5]

Time waster with immature cover art. Juice wasn't worth the squeeze.

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Best imbibed in chunks rather than cuddled down with before a fire to be read in its entirety, this is essentially lists of unusual/interesting/etc. words or phrases. From the perspective of UK English rather than American English, it was rife with amusing peculiarities that I was not familiar with.

[Q · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cute little book best suited for reading after a long, tiresome day. Short 'chapters' make it easy to open it on a random page and just read a page or two. Some word lists are very funny and some others I would love to learn by heart :)

[Jamie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good reference or coffee table book. It's filled with interesting useless information. So I liked it, but it was hard to sit down and get engrossed....

[Lily · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable read after a day of doing too much and studying too hard. Words are fun. :) Probably best read in bits instead of all at once. I'm odd.

[J.M.]

Saw this in a Bas Bleu catalog and thought it looked interesting.