The Suppository of All Wisdom

by Andrew Thompson

Inspired by Tony Abbott’s immortal verbal overreach, The Suppository of All Wisdom is a hilarious, fully illustrated guide to the words and expressions we most often mangle, muck up and just don’t quite understand.

You’ll be amazed at how many supposably well-educated speakers make mistakes – from schoolteachers, to newsreaders, to Rhodes Scholar prime ministers. Too often the misinformed flaunt the rules, and that’s a travesty. In one foul swoop, this book will make you sound smarter. It is the ultimate grammar guide, literally awesome, and begs the question: why not buy two?

Genres: Nonfiction

191 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2015

Reviews

[Rosie · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interesting book that uses humour to outline commonly confused and misused words and expressions. Never again will I aggravate someone (I may irritate them) or feel nauseous (but I will feel nauseated). I'm always trying to improve my grammar and writing, so this book was a very good find (I was going to write great, however the book is quite small... not unusually large). I had a lot of fun reading this and testing my family with questions such as "If you are driving to another town, is it 20 kilometres farther or 20 kilometres further away?"

[shanghao · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mildly interesting. Would be useful to keyboard warriors you often see online, who misuse phrases or misspell common words, but would decry you as a friggin' pedant if you so much as dared to point out common mistakes. But of course this sort of book would hardly matter to them.

Anyway. Some revelations are new to me:


Getting up to date with my Olympic terms!

These were educational too:



And these illustrate terms so often misused that said usages have now been the accepted norm:



A book for pedants and English enthusiasts, slightly bland if you're familiar with the correct terms and linguistic rules.

[Jan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good read for people interested in the English language and how we use words. There are useful sections on commonly confused pairs of words and commonly misused words. One of the most amusing sections is the one on malapropisms and it is from here that the title of the book comes. Apparently Tony Abbot spoke publicly about something being the "suppository of all wisdom". If only wisdom could be gained so easily...