The Deeper Meaning of Liff: A Dictionary of Things There Aren’t Any Words for Yet–But There Ought to Be-Fast Shipping

Description

A rollicking, thought-provoking dictionary for the modern age, featuring definitions for those things we don’t have words for, from the New York Times bestselling author behind The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams, and TV producer John Lloyd.

Does the sensation of
Tingrith(1) make you yelp? Do you bend sympathetically whenyou 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 certainlyfamiliar with all these experiences but just didn’t know that there are words forthem. Well, in fact, there aren’t—or rather there weren’t, until Douglas Adams andJohn Lloyd decided to plug these egregious linguistic
lacunae(6). They quickly realizedthat just as there are an awful lot of experiences that no one has a name for, sothere are an awful lot of names for places you will never need to go to. What a responsible citizens of a small and crowded world, we must all learn the virtuesof 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 wholenew solution to the problem of
Great Wakering(8)

1—The feeling of aluminum foilagainst 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 openexcept by biting off
the corners.

4—Generic term for anything that comes out ina gush, despite all your efforts to let it out carefully, e.g., flour into a whitesauce, ketchup onto fish, a dog into the yard, and another naughty meaning that wecan’t put on the cover.

5—The marks left on your bottom and thighs after you’vebeen sitting sunbathing in a wicker chair.

6—God knows what this means

7—For instance,some of this book was first published in Britain twenty-six years ago.

8—Look itup yourself.