The Deeper Meaning of Liff: A Dictionary of Things That There Aren't Any Words for Yet

The Meaning of Liff #2

by Douglas Adams, John Lloyd, Bert Kitchen

A Dictionary of Things That There Aren't Any Words For Yet

Genres: Humor, Nonfiction, Comedy, Reference, Language, Linguistics, Philosophy

146 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Douglas Noel Adams was an English author, humourist, and screenwriter, best known for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (HHGTTG). Originally a 1978 BBC radio comedy, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy developed into a "trilogy" of five books that sold more than 15 million copies in his lifetime. It was further developed into a television series, several stage plays, comics, a video game, and a 2005 feature film. Adams's contribution to UK radio is commemorated in The Radio Academy's Hall of Fame.
Adams also wrote Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987) and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), and co-wrote The Meaning of Liff (1983), The Deeper Meaning of Liff (1990) and Last Chance to See (1990). He wrote two stories for the television series Doctor Who, co-wrote City of Death (1979), and served as script editor for its seventeenth season. He co-wrote the sketch "Patient Abuse" for the final episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus. A posthumous collection of his selected works, including the first publication of his final (unfinished) novel, was published as The Salmon of Doubt in 2002.
Adams was a self-proclaimed "radical atheist", an advocate for environmentalism and conservation, and a lover of fast cars, technological innovation, and the Apple Macintosh.

Reviews

[Jyanx · Rating 4 out of 5]

I will admit it, if anyone else had written an entire book of definitions that they then attached to the strange names of towns, and cities, there is no way I would have read it, but this, this is written by Douglas Adams, possibly my favorite writer ever. The definitions he invents are so perfect it made me wonder why we don't actually have a word for most of them. It was a fun book to read, and it made me sad to know that he was no longer with us.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

A birthday present from my sister, The Meaning of Liff is a dictionary of words you didn't know about. Each word is actually a place name (mostly in the UK) and a humorous explanation is provided for each.

Some of them I had already known for some time – my favourite is still Wimbledon – which as we all know describes "That last drop which, no matter how much you shake it, always goes down your trouser leg."

[Thomas Stroemquist · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have yet to study The Meaning of Liff; in fact, I've owned this one for ages, but never even seen part one. Maybe not indispensable. This one isn't either, but some definitions just shine with Douglas Adams' wit and therefore it's nice to dip into once and again.

And it is really satisfying to look up that word for something that's simply missing from one's vocabulary and more traditional dictionary's both. I mean, who's not familiar with Lambarene (Feeling better for having put a pyjamas on) or haven't searched frantically for the word Baldock (the sharp prong on top of a tree stump where the tree has snapped off before being completely sawn through) or wanting to tell someone that Yarmouthing (To shout at foreigners in the belief that the louder you speak, the better they'll understand you) never helped anyone?

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't think that a mock dictionary would be something you could sit down and read through in one sitting... but - at least with this one - you can. Douglas Adams is brilliant, and at least 1/3 of the words in this book I felt I should scribble down and use immediately.
I really want to keep this book, but I know deep in my heart that if this vocabulary hasn't caught on in the past 30 years, nothing I can do will make it. So I have to pass it on for the next person to enjoy. It is quite the abalemma, though.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much of the same content as the The Meaning of Liff. While I like the idea of the earlier book as a pocket dictionary, I preferred the standard book format of this one, which also included a few humorous drawn pictures.

[Philip Guy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very funny sequel to The Meaning of Liff. Frequently you will find definitions which make you laugh out loud, and you will wish that you could remember to use at the appropriate time (but you never will!).

[Helen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This sadly hasn't aged well.

[itchy · Rating 5 out of 5]

har de har

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

So, what DA and JL did was to take actual place names and make up fake definitions for them.

For me, it was kind of an iconic bookification of funny… but not haha funny.

But even though I didn’t laugh out loud very much, and sometimes contemplated quitting in the middle, there were two great things about this book.
1. Sometimes, they really, really came up with concepts that we really do need words for.
2. Sometimes, the words they chose really, really sounded like the made up definition.
3. Sometimes, just sometimes, they managed both at the same time.

They say the Eskimos have a thousand words for snow… and so it is with Douglas Adams and farts. It wasn’t all potty humor… but potty humor certainly got a fair airing.

The cross-referenced made-up index was particularly impressive, as far as commitment to the concept goes. Unfortunately I got bored by the time I got to the B’s. All that work for me to ignore.

I kept a list of the ones I really liked and was going to immortalize it here (while being funny about it), but apparently, ain't nobody got time for dat. This is as far as I got:

Aalst – one who changes his name to be nearer the front. (perfect example of good word use)
Abinger – One who washes everything except the frying pan, the cheese grater, and the saucepan in which the chocolate sauce has been made. (that would be my husband, circa 2004-2008)
Alltami - The ancient art of being able to balance the hot and cold shower taps (perhaps if we had a word for it, there wouldn't be so much crying of the 6-year-old)

[La La · Rating 2 out of 5]

At first I was thrilled to get this ebook for $1.99 because I am a huge fan of Hitchhiker's, but after reading about half of the letter A entries I was scratching my head. I thought the "words" would have some rooting in real etymology, which would have been entertainly clever, but all these were just randomly made up words and spit out definitions with not one molecule of actual connection. I could have done that.

For a bit the items and situations, which ranged from hilarious to only mildly funny, were enough but it became tedious after awhile. I deemed it not even worth the $1.99 sale price, and returned the ebook to Amazon.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a second book in the "Meaning of Liff.." series. It is basically a humorous dictionary of imaginary and twisted words which on closer examination strike a cord with our everyday world. You can like many of these types of books read the entries from A to Z in order - but its hard going - however it is more fun to simply flick through the book picking out entries and reading their descriptions. The only problem now is once read you are just dying to try some of them out (or is that just me?)

[Espen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ambrose Bierce with British humor and less cynicism. Full text available on the Internet if you search a bit.

[Nathan Hill · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kinda pointless. Reads like a phonebook.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Alltami (n.)
The ancient art of being able to balance the hot and cold shower taps.'

[Bee · Rating 5 out of 5]

So much a part of my daily vocabulary that I often get very very odd looks and don't know why. A must have.

[Anthony Faber · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are a few amusing things, but not enough to make this book worth reading.

[Julie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I adore Douglas Adams, but this just wasn't as funny as I was hoping. Lotttts of butt and penis humor.

[Robert Hudder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wilmot:
A book that went brought home is the same as one you have already purchased but has changed due to: correct cultural sensitivities; changing society or to help Americans understand. Examples include Agatha Christie's 'And Then There Were None' and J. K. Rowling's 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone'.

Wilno:
1. The feeling that the book that you brought home might be a wilmot but turns out to be an edition that expands on a previous one. Most often these books are cookbooks or dictionaries of a sort.
2. The actual difference content of a wilno.

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not so much a story as a dictionary of made up words. The people that created the game Balderdash ripped off this book. I’ve always been good at Balderdash, but Douglas Adams would have been the undisputed master.

[Helen · Rating 3 out of 5]

About half of the content is from the "Meaning of Liff" so this was kind of a let down. I still enjoyed it though.

[Marie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Basically the same book as The Meaning of Liff with pictures and pronunciation guide.

[Irene Adler · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's amusing to dip into but not to read as a book. Finished reading in the Cs.

[abby sunrise]

Es como un diccionario, es para hojearlo y reírse un rato o mandarle fotos de los conceptos a los amigos. Pero eso, quiero mucho a Douglas Adams

[Linda Ivarsson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Smart and hilarious.

[Tony Lawrence]

Douglas Adams and John Lloyd. Not really 'short stories', but how else would I classify a spoof dictionary!

Re-read but no review

[Mirhanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love Douglas Adams, but I think this book was a lot funnier when it was Adams sitting around with his buddies thinking of entries. But as someone in a quite room, it's just not that interesting. I kept it around for waiting rooms so I'd have something to read, but wouldn't care if I'm disturbed.

[Gauri Parab · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one was so relatable, I could have written most of those definitions myself! Thoughtful and hilarious, you could pick up this book and start reading from any point and immediately brighten up your day!

[Madeleine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been reading and loving Douglas Adams's works since I was in middle school; while it's possible to translate this as my sense of humor not evolving much in 15 years, I'd rather embrace the notion that I was saddled with a funny bone (among other things) that would have served me much better had I been born on the other side of the Atlantic. Either way, the real point is that diving into anything penned by one of my all-time favorite writers always feels a little bit like coming home or slipping into a pair of lovingly wrecked Chucks. Especially since I've had a hankering for something delightfully British and wryly executed ever since rewatching the 2005 "Hitchhiker's Guide" movie, which was really the only bright spot during my recent run-in with the modern plague.

This goofy little book starts out with the only instances of me both being positively tickled by a phonetic guide and finding an alphabetical sequence of maps to be decidedly hilarious (my usual inability to accept skewed images of familiar land masses -- like an upside map projection, which just freaks me out -- was deftly avoided by the masterminds' execution). I wasn't really sure what the point was until I deigned to read the book jacket and discovered that the whole premise of the book is reimagining funny-sounding place names (the easy target of Gobbler's Knob is woefully absent but Wetwang picks up that slack) as simpler ways of naming those hard-to-summarize nouns, verbs and social gaffes that no one wants to acknowledge as common experiences or ever thought to wrap up in easy-to-express packaging for mass usage.

The breakdown of these definitions is equal parts polite renaming of slightly less polite realities (Moisie: the condition of one's face after performing cunnilingus), identifying those small annoyances that comprise a lousy day when you've encountered just the right frequency and combination of them (Salween: a faint taste of dishwashing liquid in a cup of tea; Fladderbister: the part of a raincoat that trails out of a car after you've closed the door on it), recognizing those awkward inevitabilities that come with maintaining the illusion of ours being a civilized society (Shifnal: an awkward shuffling walk caused by two or more people in a hurry accidentally getting into the same segment of a revolving door) and addressing those annoying habits that result in an individual's repulsion being universally agreed upon (Dinsdale: one who always plays "Chopsticks" on the piano), with some uncategorized silliness thrown in for variety.

A celebration of humanity's finer points, it's not (because where's the humor in THAT?). But it is an entertaining and quick little read that offers the unexpected bonus of a warm, tingly assurance that someone, somewhere, appreciates the need for words to describe all the things that one wonders if anyone else has ever experienced. Like that three-week-old unidentifiable lump in the fridge or the feeling one gets when cornered by the least agreeable person at a party, only to have a moment of ecstatic relief to realize that that person isn't you.

[Lucy Goodchild · Rating 5 out of 5]

This year, the wonderful Meaning of Liff and I share a milestone birthday. Imagine my excitement at the prospect of a sequel to this masterpiece 30 years after the first edition. So it seemed like a good time to read the version on my bookshelf again in anticipation.

Written by the unstoppable duo Douglas Adams (if you haven’t read the Hitchhiker’s Guide trilogy of five, you are missing out on some magic) and John Lloyd (QI creator), The Deeper Meaning of Liff is a hilarious dictionary-style book that assigns meanings to place names.

In the preface of the original book, The Meaning of Liff (1983), Adams and Lloyd explain: ‘Our job, as we see it, is to get these words down off the signposts and into the mouths of babes and sucklings and so on, where they can start earning their keep…’

In the extended 1990 version I read, this leads to a brilliantly funny back-and-forth between the two authors, played out through each edition of the book released between 1983 and 1990. Undoubtedly the best preface I’ve had the pleasure of reading, it is a wonderful indication of their great partnership – one that results in unstoppable giggling.

The book begins with a series of maps – one for each letter of the alphabet. At first it seems that they intend to show the locations of the place names featured in the book. But the more you turn pages, the more you see they are comically skewed, squashed and manipulated, reflecting some of the ridiculous diagrammatic representations of simple things we see on a daily basis. My personal favourite is P – a grid of one square wide by three tall, with coordinates A1, B1 and C1. In A1 is an image of the UK, B1 shows the whole planet, and C1 Australia. Place names starting with P are assigned grid coordinates.

The main part of the book is set out like a dictionary – alphabetically, with recognizable abbreviations describing the words. All the words are place names (mostly in the UK but some further afield) and have been assigned meanings that do not yet have a word. The meanings give a wonderful insight into every day life and personal experiences we don’t often discuss.

For the full review visit http://letlucyedit.wordpress.com

[Valentin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Does the sensation of Tingrith(1) make you yelp? Do you bend sympathetically when you see someone Ahenny(2)? Can you deal with a Naugatuck(3) without causing a Toronto(4)? Will you suffer from Kettering(5) this summer? Probably. You are almost certainly familiar with all these experiences but just didn’t know that there are words for them. Well, in fact, there aren’t—or rather there weren’t, until Douglas Adams and John Lloyd decided to plug these egregious linguistic lacunae(6). They quickly realized that just as there are an awful lot of experiences that no one has a name for, so there are an awful lot of names for places you will never need to go to. What a waste. As responsible citizens of a small and crowded world, we must all learn the virtues of recycling(7) and put old, worn-out but still serviceable names to exciting, vibrant, new uses. This is the book that does that for you: The Deeper Meaning of Liff—a whole new solution to the problem of Great Wakering(8)1—The feeling of aluminum foil against your fillings.2—The way people stand when examining other people’s bookshelves.3—A plastic packet containing shampoo, mustard, etc., which is impossible to open except by biting off the corners.4—Generic term for anything that comes out in a gush, despite all your efforts to let it out carefully, e.g., flour into a white sauce, ketchup onto fish, a dog into the yard, and another naughty meaning that we can’t put on the cover.5—The marks left on your bottom and thighs after you’ve been sitting sunbathing in a wicker chair.6—God knows what this means7—For instance, some of this book was first published in Britain twenty-six years ago.8—Look it up yourself.