From the bawdy to the sublime, the best writing on language for word lovers, grammar mavens, and armchair linguists. A brilliant, witty, and engaging compendium on the uses and abuses of the English language. With bestselling narratives such as The Professor and the Madman to edicts by popular grammar mavens including Pat O'Conner and Barbara Wallraff, it is clear readers outside of academia are becoming more and more intrigued with language. Founded by legendary lexicographer Lawrence Urdang, for thirty years Verbatim has published amusing and intriguing articles on the English language and the idea of language in general. Here, for the first time, is a collection of Verbatim's greatest hits and wondrous discoveries on concept, usage, jargon, wordplay, linguistics, blunders, malapropisms, and more. With contributors such as Richard Lederer, Jesse Sheidlower, and Joe Queenan, lexicography heavyweights like Frederick Cassidy and William Kunstler, Verbatim is a smart and sassy collection for anyone seeking the highly scholarly or the completely frivolous. From the uses of language in the Bible to the components of a British soccer chant, this astounding collection is sure to offer something for every language enthusiast and word lover to enjoy. Verbatim , says the language quarterly's editor, Erin McKean, is "a magazine about all of the fun parts of English and linguistics, written for people who don't necessarily have a Ph.D." This collection of pieces culled from the quarterly is like a candy shop for word lovers. John Tittensor writes about unfortunate last names, Philip Michael Cohen discloses the secret lingo of tiddlywinks players, Pete May explores British football chants, and Jesse Sheidlower reports on the revising of his book The F-Word . Steve Bonner considers "the language as it will never be used," dreaming up evocative word combinations so unlikely that they'd never be uttered: "rotating strawberry madonna," "angry tuba gravy." McKean claims to like "that 'bad English' exists." She also maintains that one should resist correcting the grammar of others. "The easiest way to put your own utterances under intense scrutiny," she warns, "is to toss off a thoughtless public correction of someone else's." --Jane Steinberg For over 25 years, Verbatim: A Language Quarterly has been publishing short articles on the use and misuse of language. Here, McKean, editor of Verbatim and a dictionary editor for Oxford University Press, compiles 58 articles from the quarterly on subjects ranging from the meanings of the "F word" to variants in Bible translations. In between, various authors discuss other languages (Welsh dictionaries, Quebe ois Gallicisms, Spanish variations in South America), word games (puns, spoonerisms), jokes (student bloopers, matching wordplay, Irish bulls), jargon (clown talk, S & M terminology, sports slang), and much, much more. McKean has used the work of well-known linguists and journalists (Laurence Urdang, Richard Lederer, and Gerald Eskenazi), but most of the pieces are by unknowns who submitted interesting language observations. All the articles are well written, but some will be more interesting than others. Recommended for public libraries. Kitty Chen Dean, Nassau Coll., Garden City, NY Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. The language quarterly Verbatim is no ordinary work--it's not weighted down with impenetrable linguistic jargon, and it's not a Sunday-supplement rant against bad grammar. McKean's collection of articles from the quarterly likewise rises above the ordinary. The contributors, selected for their good writing, take us on an informative romp through some of the most intriguing aspects of our "messy, uninhibited, and sprawling" language. We're regaled, for example, with fascinating tales told by etymologists; an account of "slayer slang" (teen TV favorite Buffy the Vampire Slayer coins its own words); world history in the words of American students (the ancient Egyptians were "mummies" who traveled across the "dessert" by "Camelot"); and word games. And we want to know more: How have college dictionaries handled sexual intercourse (and its synonyms, including the f word)? Should French Canadians bemoan the corruption of their beloved language by such expressions as le snack bar when they in turn are gallicizing Quebec English? The answers, the wit, and the surprises are here for language mavens of nearly all stripes. Philip Herbst Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Erin McKean is the editor of Verbatim: A Language Quarterly and senior editor, U.S. Dictionaries, for Oxford University Press. McKean wanted to be a lexicographer since she was eight years old after reading a newspaper story about the production of the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. She attended the University of Chicago, where she completed a B.A. and an M.A. in linguistics in four years. She lives in Chicago.