Phraseology: Thousands of Bizarre Origins, Unexpected Connections, and Fascinating Facts about English's Best Expressions

by Barbara Ann Kipfer

The Amazing Secrets of the Phrases We Use Everyday Phraseology is the ultimate collection of everything you never knew about the wonderful phrases found in the English language. It contains information about phrase history and etymology; unusual, lost, or uncommon phrases; how phrases are formed; and more than 7,000 facts about common English phrases. Practical enough to be used as a reference book but so fun that every book lover will want to read it straight through, Phraseology contains such engrossing tidbits

Genres: Nonfiction, Writing, Reference, Language, History

322 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 1, 2008

About the author

Dr. Barbara Ann Kipfer (born in 1954) is a lexicographer,as well as an archaeologist. She has written more than 60 books, including 14,000 Things to be Happy About (Workman), which has more than a million copies in print and has given rise to many Page-a-Day calendars. The 25th anniversary edition of the book was published in October 2014. She is the editor of Roget's International Thesaurus.

Kipfer is Chief Lexicographer of the company Temnos. She has worked for such companies as Google, Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com, Answers.com, Ask Jeeves, Bellcore/Telcordia, Federated Media Publishing, General Electric Research, IBM Research, idealab, Knowledge Adventure, Textdigger, The Chicago Tribune, and WolframAlpha. Barbara holds a PhD and MPhil in Linguistics (University of Exeter), a PhD in Archaeology (Greenwich University), an MA and a PhD in Buddhist Studies (Akamai University), and a BS in Physical Education (Valparaiso University).

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Renee · Rating 1 out of 5]

This might be a good book if you are not a native english speaker, otherwise skip it. Here are some examples of the the "phrases" in this book that really don't need explaining outside of the internet or a dictionary: bipolar, dwarf planet, iambic pentameter, milk chocolate, rolling pin, stem cells, tomato paste. It says this about milk toast: a buttered toast usually served in warm milk with sugar and seasoning. Hello?! She doesn't even mention milquetoast, which is far more interesting and the kind of thing I was looking for out of this book. This book is neither bizarre nor fascinating.

[Heather · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a waste of pages. Some of the definitions were flat out bad and some don't even pretend to be helpful. Example: "savoir faire-can only be used as a noun in English though it is a pair of verbs in French." Ok, but I still don't know what it means? That might at least be called somewhat interesting even if you have to look up a definition elsewhere. But then we have, "saving grace-dates to 1910." Completely useless. This book isn't good for reference or reading. Trash.

[HopeF · Rating 1 out of 5]

I did not finish out of frustration, and I have read dictionaries for fun. It gives tidbits of information, either history or current use/context, but not both. If interested in trivia game information, this could be helpful but not for increasing linguistic understanding.

[Julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

now that I've perused the book, I've come to realize the dictionary-esque reality of the book. This wasn't really what I was expecting. I thought it would be a little less... alphabetical and a little more topic organized. Still it is occasionally the font of some interesting tidbits. For instance, let me just open the book to a random page. Ah! Fell into the I's. We have these following entries:
iceburg lettuce got its name from the fact that California growers started shipping it covered with heaps of crushed ice in the 1920s; it had previously been called crisphead lettuce.

iced tea is the correct form and will probably not change the way iced cream and iced water did.

an idiot card is another name for a cue card

if I were is the correct form when one is referring to a conditional future event
This give you a taste of what you can find approximately 20 per page on 300 pages. It's really interesting trivia, but not something you can sit down and read. Saying as much, I've not actually finished it, but am enjoying reading it in small bites.

I especially like having this on my Nook so I can read this when I don't have too much time to commit to reading; in line at the store, for example. If I get pulled away from what I am reading, it doesn't matter because it's a short sentence of knowledge and I can pick up right where I left off without feeling as if I've left the world I was involved.

In conclusion, a great trivia book filled to the brim with random knowledge. I really think this would make a great coffee table book!

[Karen (Living Unabridged) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing. Lots of words and phrases here but the definitions were suspect. I found myself wanting to argue with the author more than once - "That's NOT what that means!" The entries for things I already knew made me suspect the author's definitions for the things I didn't already know.

Can't imagine anyone else reading through this the way I did. Save yourself the trouble.

Could be useful as a reference, I suppose, since it's organized like a dictionary.

[Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is brilliant.