[PDF] The Alternative Dictionary eBook

Author : Howard Beck
Publisher :
Page : 282 pages
File Size : 11,47 MB
Release : 2017-09-04
Category :
ISBN : 9781549591112

GET BOOK

English is the world's most dynamic tongue, a linguistic trove throughout millennia added to by successive waves of invaders and settlers: Celt, Roman, Viking, Anglo-Saxon, Norman, the whole leavened with wordy plunder of former Empire. It is a linguistic treasure trove, expanding continuously through the coining of new words and augmented and enriched by regional slang and dialect, supplemented by foreign 'loan words' considered of some utility. This continuous verbal metamorphosis results today in a lexicon melting pot, a bubbling vocabulary of around 500,000 words -- as opposed to French, which has a mere 70,000. And herein lies the versatility of the English tongue, a Latin-based language that is pliant in its adaptability, vested in wordy agility and subtle nuance -- a veritable textual mother lode for poets and authors to mine.Examined phonetically some humble words are found to harbour subtle, unexpected meanings, awaiting interpretation in an entirely tangential or humorous way far removed from the intended original. Amused by this I decided to pick up the English lexicon, give it a good old shake to see what tumbled from the pages. This volume is the result. It offers a tongue-in-cheek metaphor to all the intractable (or should that be a hard-to-control male bovine) language convention. So dear reader, if you wish to know the difference between snorks and applejacks , or plan to go gongoozling, or maybe try some turnim leg, then make sure you have some frangers at hand. If after all that you feel peppered then prepare yourself some blandishments and don't yalm them too fast.

Author : Merriam-Webster, Inc
Publisher : Merriam-Webster Incorporated
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 12,80 MB
Release : 2006
Category : Reference
ISBN : 9780877798507

GET BOOK

'The Merriam-Webster Thesaurus' offers over 157,000 synonyms, antonyms, related and contrasted words and idioms, all alphabetically organised with brief definitions of shared meanings.

Author : Martin Parker
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 353 pages
File Size : 36,66 MB
Release : 2008-02-29
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1848130619

GET BOOK

'There is no alternative to free market liberalism and managerialism', is the orthodoxy of the twenty-first century. All too often, ordinary people across the world are being told that the problem of organization is already solved, or that it is being solved somewhere else, or that it need not concern them because they have no choices. This dictionary provides those who disagree with the evidence. Using hundreds of entries and cross-references, it proves that there are many alternatives to the way that we currently organize ourselves. These alternatives could be expressed as fictional utopias, they could be excavated from the past, or they could be described in terms of the contemporary politics of anti-corporate protest, environmentalism, feminism and localism. Part reference work, part source book, and part polemic, this dictionary provides a rich understanding of the ways in which fiction, history and today's politics provide different ways of thinking about how we can and should organize for the coming century.

Author : Jonathon Green
Publisher : Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.
Page : 1600 pages
File Size : 41,71 MB
Release : 2005
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780304366361

GET BOOK

With its unparalleled coverage of English slang of all types (from 18th-century cant to contemporary gay slang), and its uncluttered editorial apparatus, Cassell's Dictionary of Slang was warmly received when its first edition appeared in 1998. 'Brilliant.' said Mark Lawson on BBC2's The Late Review; 'This is a terrific piece of work - learned, entertaining, funny, stimulating' said Jonathan Meades in The Evening Standard.But now the world's best single-volume dictionary of English slang is about to get even better. Jonathon Green has spent the last seven years on a vast project: to research in depth the English slang vocabulary and to hunt down and record written instances of the use of as many slang words as possible. This has entailed trawling through more than 4000 books - plus song lyrics, TV and movie scripts, and many newspapers and magazines - for relevant material. The research has thrown up some fascinating results