I never knew there was a word for that

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Vodka vocabulary

False friends

Under the monkey

The morning after

Dont cry over spilt milk

16 All in a Days Work

Point blank

Dodo

Eel dribbling

Angel makers

False friends

Hippopotomonstrosesquipedalianism

Horn diggers

Mice milkers

Jobsworth

Promises promises

Counting the stars

Sell out

Bad workman blames his tools

17 Game Theory

Slow start

False friends

Aggro

The sound of your heart racing

Taking a dip

Dizzy dancing

Suits and tricks

One is fun

Drooping tongue

Staying up

18 Animal Magic

The great rat with a pocket

Fluttering and kicking

Scratch chew tear beat

Wriggle wriggle

Tucked away

Wa

Commanding

Aw aw

How to count on your chickens

Roofgutter rabbit

Moo

Flying low

19 Climate Change

Suns up

Heat haze

False friends

In a flood

You fish on your side

Coucher de soleil

Its raining cats and dogs

20 The Root of All Evil

Cutting gold

Gifted

Its the thought that counts

False friends

Stall

Red shells out white shells back

Onearmed bandit

Retail therapy

As easy as falling off a log

21 The Criminal Life

False friends

Lost in translation

Kindling

Descending spiders

Radish with glasses

When crimes go wrong

Pig box

As thick as thieves

22 Realpolitik

A gift

Changing shirts

Muffled

Tail between legs

Talk box

War elephants

Heroes

War trophies

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark

23 From Better to Hearse

Peaky

Sweating carrots

Docteur docteur

Hex

Corpse in the middle

Curtains

A thousand cuts

Stiff

Feet first

Funeral crashers

Hex revenge

24 The Great Beyond

Just a jealous guy

Holy cockerel

Broken sewing needles

On a hedgehogs back

Charismatic

Whistling in the wind

The crystal ball

When pigs fly

The Wonder of Whiffling

DOG AND BONE

SNAIL MAIL

GR8

A LITTLE SOMETHING

DIGNITY AND PRIDE

ALL RIGHT MATE?

SMOOTH CUSTOMER

CLEVER CLOGS

MANNER OF SPEAKING

WORD JOURNEYS

  STICKYBEAK  Character

LOOSE KANGAROOS

MEN OF STRAW

TWO GENTLEMEN

YUPPIES

REGULAR GUY

WORD JOURNEYS

GOING POSTALEmotions

JESUS WEPT

BRING ME SUNSHINE

HA HA BONK

WORD JOURNEYS

  TWIDDLEDIDDLES  Body language

MODEL FIGURES

NIP AND TUCK

FACE FUNGUS

SNIFFER

PEEPERS

GNASHERS

BOTTLING IT

SINISTER

JOHN THOMAS

LEGS ELEVEN

  PRICKMEDAINTY  Clothes

SKIMPIES

TREWS

KITTED OUT

REBELS IN BOATERS

TOPPING

 GOING WEST Illness death and spiritual matters

ELF WARNING

DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE

GOD KNOWS

LAST WORDS

DEATH BY HONEY

DUST TO DUST

ELYSIAN FIELDS

GODS IN HIS HEAVEN

THE UNCERTAIN FUTURE

  SLAPSAUCE  Food

KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL

GIVE AND TAKE AND EAT IT RHYMING SLANG

PLUS ONE

POSTPRANDIAL

WORD JOURNEYS

CRAMBAZZLEDDrink

MINES A NIPPITATUM

ON THE NAIL

LAST GASPER

SPEAKEASY

TWO TOO MANY

WORD JOURNEYS

FOOTERFOOTERTaking off

BONEBREAKER

GO CART

TICKET TO RIDE

GRICERS DAUGHTER

ELSEWHERE

 MUTTONERS AND 

SECONDS AWAY

OVER AND OUT

TOUCHÉ

TOUR DE FRANCE

COLORADO CLIFFHANGER

WORD JOURNEYS

  RUBBYDUBBY  Country pursuits

TALLY HO

GAME ON

GETTING HOOKED

GIFT HORSES

ODDS ON

VERY GOOD GOING

    MADHOUSE    Indoor games and hobbies

DICEMAN

FEVVERS

POKER FACE

FULL HOUSE

HIGH STAKES

MONTE CARLO OR BUST

ANORAKS

WORD JOURNEYS

 MUSH FAKERS AND 

COLOUR CODED

ELBOW GREASE

BRAINSTORMING

PUSHING THE ENVELOPE

THANK GOD ITS FRIDAY OFFICE ACRONYMS

ROOM AT THE TOP

THE SACK

MY OLD MANS A

WIDOWS AND ORPHANS

THE READIES

WORD JOURNEYS

  BULK AND FILE  Crime and punishment

MY DEAR FELLOW

NOT QUITE MY COLOUR

PANHANDLER

ARTFUL DODGERS

OLD BILL

BAD APPLES

PETTIFOGGERS

PORRIDGE

CLEAN SHIRT

WORD JOURNEYS

  BUNTING TIME  Matters of love

ZEPPELINS

HUNTER DITHERERS

DELIGHTFUL

CHEAP DATE

COUNTRY LOVING

ALL LOVED UP

DROIT DE SEIGNEUR

WORD JOURNEYS

  WITTOLS AND  

IN THE PAPERS

VIRAGO

UP THE DUFF

PRIVATE VIEWS

CHIPS OFF THE OLD BLOCK

EARLY PROMISE

COLTISH

MANNERS MAKYTH MAN

JUST MISSED A GEOFF

WORD JOURNEYS

  OYSTER PARTS  Culture

PENMEN

ARE YOU WORKING?

AGAIN FROM THE TOP

LIGHTS UP

BUMS ON SEATS

MORE WHIFFLE

ROCK FOLLIES

WORD JOURNEYS

DIMBOX AND

GOING REGIMENTAL

YELLOWBELLY

WEIGHING ANCHOR

SHOCK AND AWE

PANCAKE SERVICES WATCHWORDS

POLITICOS

TWO CHEERS FOR DEMOCRACY

WORD JOURNEYS

  SCURRYFUNGE  Domestic life

BRIGHT LIGHTS

SOILED BY ASSOCIATION

HOUSEPROUD

HOUSEWARMING

THE THREE NIGHT RULE

BEDDYBYES

  AW WHOOP  Animals

PRANCERS AND DOBBINS

LAND OF THE LONG WHITE FLEECE

FOWL PLAY

GREAT AND SMALL

YELLS BELLS

PEN AND INK

RSPCA

   SWALLOCKY   Rural life and weather

FIGHTING FOR THE CLAICK

GREEN FINGERS

BOSKY

THE RAIN IT RAINETH EVERYDAY

BLOWN AWAY

SNOW ON THE LINE

WORD JOURNEYS

  FEELIMAGEERIES  Paraphernalia

ROUGHLY SPEAKING

COUNTING SHEEP

WHO WANTS TO BE A VIGINTILLIONAIRE?

YOUR NUMBERS UP

PALINDROMES

TINCTURE

UP BETIMES

THINGUMMY

WORD JOURNEYS

Авторские права

I Never Knew There Was a Word For It

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  I NEVER KNEW THERE WAS A WORD FOR IT

  Adam Jacot de Boinod, hunter of perfect and obscure bon mots, is a true linguistic bowerbird (a person who collects an astonishing array of – sometimes useless – objects). He trawled the languages of the world for exotic specimens in his bestselling books The Wonder of Whiffling, The Meaning of Tingo and hit follow-up Toujours Tingo.

  In memory of my father

  I Never Knew There

  Was a Word For It

  ADAM JACOT DE BOINOD

  With illustrations by Sandra Howgate

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group (USA), Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  www.penguin.com

  The Meaning of Tingo first published in Penguin Books 2005

  Toujours Tingo first published in Penguin Books 2007

  The Wonder of Whiffling first published in Particular Books 2009

  Published under this title with a new Introduction in Penguin Books 2010

  Copyright © Adam Jacot de Boinod, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2010

  Illustrations copyright © Samantha Howland, 2005, 2007, 2009

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  All rights reserved

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-0-14-196353-2

  Contents

  Introduction

  Acknowledgements

  The Meaning of Tingo

  Meeting and Greeting

  From Top to Toe

  Movers and Shakers

  Getting Around

  It Takes All Sorts

  Falling in Love

  The Family Circle

  Clocking On

  Time Off

  Eating and Drinking

  Below Par

  From Cradle to Grave

  Otherworldly

  All Creatures Great and Small

  Whatever the Weather

  Hearing Things

  Seeing Things

  Number Crunching

  What’s in a Name?

  Toujours Tingo

  Getting Acquainted

  The Human Condition

  Emotional Intelligence

  Social Animals

  Having an Argument

  The Rules of Attraction

  Family Ties

  Kids

  Body Beautiful

  Dressed to Kill

  Stretching Your Legs

  Upping Sticks

  Home Sweet Home

  Dinner Time

  One for the Road

  All in a Day’s Work

  Game Theory

  Animal Magic

  Climate Change

  The Root of All Evil

  The Criminal Life

  Realpolitik

  From Better to Hearse

  The Great Beyond

  The Wonder of Whiffling

  Clatterfarts and Jaisies

  Stickybeak

  Going Postal

  Twiddle-diddles

  Prick-me-dainty

  Going West

  Slapsauce

  Crambazzled

  Footer-footer

  Muttoners and Golden Ferrets

  Rubby-dubby

  Madhouse

  Mush Fakers and Applesquires

  Bulk and File

  Bunting Time

  Wittols and Beer Babies

  Oyster Parts

  Dimbox and Quockerwodger

  Scurryfunge

  Aw Whoop

  Swallocky

  Feelimageeries

  Introduction

  My name is Adam Jacot de Boinod and I’m hopelessly addicted to strange words. I’ve spent the last six years compulsively hunting down unusual vocabulary and now have written three books collecting my very best and most unusual discoveries.

  All three are included in this volume, which I’ve called I Never Knew There Was a Word For It, because I didn’t. My vocabulary is now ten times richer than it was six years ago, as I hope yours will soon be too … Let me tell you a little about each book:

  The Meaning of Tingo

  My interest in unusual words was triggered when one day, working as a researcher for the BBC programme QI, I picked up a weighty Albanian dictionary to discover that they have no less than twenty-seven words for eyebrow and the same number for different types of moustache, ranging from a mustaqe madh, or bushy, to a mustaqe posht, one which droops down at both ends.

  My curiosity rapidly became a passion. I was soon unable to go near a bookshop or library without sniffing out the often dusty shelf where the foreign language dictionaries were kept. I started to collect my favourites: nakhur, for example, a Persian word meaning ‘a camel that gives no milk until her nostrils are tickled’; Many described strange or unbelievable things. How, when and where, for example, would a man be described as a marilopotes, the Ancient Greek for ‘a gulper of coaldust’? And could the Japanese samurai really have used the verb tsuji-giri, meaning ‘to try out a new sword on a passerby’? Others expressed concepts that seemed all too familiar. We have all met a Zechpreller, ‘someone who leaves without paying the bill’; worked with a neko-neko, the Indonesian for ‘one who has a creative idea which only makes things worse’; or spent too much time with an ataoso, the Central American Spanish for ‘one who sees problems with everything’. It was fascinating to find thoughts that lie on the tip of an English tongue, crystallized into vocabulary. From the Zambian sekaseka, ‘to laugh without reason’, through the Czech nedovtipa, ‘one who finds it difficult to take a hint’, to the Japanese bakku-shan, ‘a woman who only appears pretty when seen from behind’.

  In the end my passion became an obsession. I combed over two million words in countless dictionaries. I trawled the internet, phoned embassies, and tracked down foreign language speakers who could confirm my findings. I discovered that in Afrikaans, frogs go kwaak-kwaak, in Korea owls go buung-buung, while in Denmark Rice Crispies go Knisper! Knasper! Knupser! And that in Easter Island tingo means to borrow things from a friend’s house one by one until there’s nothing left.

  Luckily for my sanity, Penguin then signed me up to write the book that was to become The Meaning of Tingo, which meant I had an editor to help me decide which of the thousands of great words should make it into the final

book but, goodness, it was hard to leave some out. The book came out in 2005 and was an instant hit. It has since been published in eleven different languages and Tingomania spread all round the globe.

  Toujours Tingo

  I was delighted when the book’s fans demanded a sequel as I felt like I was only just getting started. This time I found such delights as okuri-okami, the Japanese word for ‘a man who feigns thoughtfulness by offering to see a girl home only to molest her once he gets in the door’ (literally, ‘a see-you-home wolf’); kaelling, the Danish for ‘a woman who stands on the steps of her house yelling obscenities at her kids’; and belochnik, the Russian for ‘a thief specializing in stealing linen off clothes lines’ (an activity that was supposedly very lucrative in the early 1980s). And how could I have missed the German Kiebitz, ‘an onlooker at a card game who interferes with unwanted advice’ or the Portuguese pesamenteiro, ‘one who habitually joins groups of mourners at the home of a deceased person, ostensibly to offer condolences but in reality to partake of the refreshments which he expects will be served’?

  In this book I ventured into over two hundred new languages. The Ndebele of Southern Africa have the word dii-koyna, meaning ‘to destroy one’s own property in anger’, an impulse surely felt by most of us at some time or another, if not acted upon. From the Bakweri language of Cameroon we have wo-mba, a charming word to describe ‘the smiling in sleep by children’; and from the Buli language of Ghana the verb pelinti, ‘to move very hot food around inside one’s mouth in order to avoid too close a contact’. And doubtless there are many among us who have found ourselves disturbed by a butika roka (Gilbertese, Oceania) ‘a brother-in-law coming round too often’.

  Once again, of course, many of the more unusual words relate closely to the local specifics of their cultures. Most of us are unlikely to need the verb sendula, (from the Mambwe of Zambia) meaning ‘to find accidentally a dead animal in the forest’, which carries with it the secondary meaning ‘and be excited at the thought that a lion or leopard might still be around’. But even if we never have the call to use these expressions, it’s surely enriching to know that in Finnish, poronkusema is ‘the distance equal to how far a reindeer can travel without urinating’; while manantsona, from the Malagasy of Madagascar, is ‘to smell or sniff before entering a house, as a dog does’. We may not share the same climate, but we can all too easily imagine the use of words like hanyauku, (Rukwangali, Namibia) ‘to walk on tiptoe on warm sand’, barbarian-on (Ik, Nilo-Saharan), ‘to sit in a group of people warming up in the morning sun’, or dynke (Norwegian), ‘the act of dunking somebody’s face in snow’.

  Half as long again as The Meaning of Tingo, this second bite into the substantial cherry of world languages allowed me to venture in depth into all sorts of new areas. There are more examples of ‘false friends’, from the Czech word host, which confusingly means ‘guest’, to the Estonian sober, a perhaps unlikely word for ‘a male friend’. There are the intriguing meanings of the names of cities and countries, Palindromes and even national anthems, as well as a series of worldwide idioms, which join the words in confirming that the challenges, joys and disappointments of human existence are all too similar around the world. English’s admonitory ‘Don’t count your chickens’, for example, is echoed in most languages, becoming, in Danish: man skal ikke sælge skindet, før bjørnen er skudt ‘one should not sell the fur before the bear has been shot’; in Turkish, dereyi görmeden paçalari sivama, ‘don’t roll up your trouser-legs before you see the stream’ and in the Ndonga language of Namibia ino manga ondjupa ongombe inaayi vala, ‘don’t hang the churning calabash before the cow has calved’.

  The Wonder Of Whiffling

  While I was working on the previous two books, scouring libraries and second-hand bookshops, riffling through reference books from around the world to find words with unusual and delightful meanings, I kept coming across splendid English dictionaries too. Not just the mighty twenty-volume Oxford English Dictionary, but collections covering dialect, slang and subsidiary areas, such as Jamaican or Newfoundland English. Sneaking the occasional glance away from my main task I realized there was a wealth of little-known or forgotten words in our language, from its origins in Anglo-Saxon, through Old and Middle English and Tudor–Stuart, then on to the rural dialects collected so lovingly by Victorian lexicographers, the argot of nineteenth-century criminals, slang from the two world wars, right up to our contemporary world and the jargon that has grown up around such activities as darts, birding and working in an office. Offered the chance, it seemed only right to gather the best examples together and complete my trilogy: bringing, as it were, the original idea home.

  Some of our English words mean much the same as they’ve always meant. Others have changed beyond recognition, such as racket, which originally meant the palm of the hand; grape, a hook for gathering fruit; or muddle, to wallow in mud. Then there are those words that have fallen out of use, but would undoubtedly make handy additions to any vocabulary today. Don’t most of us know a blatteroon (1645), a person who will not stop talking, not to mention a shot-clog (1599), a drinking companion only tolerated because he pays for the drinks. And if one day we feel mumpish (1721), sullenly angry, shouldn’t we seek the company of a grinagog (1565), one who is always grinning?

  The dialects of Britain provide a wealth of coinages. In the Midlands, for example, we find a jaisy, a polite and effeminate man, and in Yorkshire a stridewallops, a tall and awkward woman. If you tuck too much into the clotted cream in Cornwall you might end up ploffy, plump; in Shropshire, hold back on the beer or you might develop joblocks, fleshy, hanging cheeks; and down in Wiltshire hands that have been left too long in the washtub are quobbled. The Geordies have the evocative word dottle for the tobacco left in the pipe after smoking, and in Lincolnshire charmings are paper and rag chewed into small pieces by mice. In Suffolk to nuddle is to walk alone with the head held low; and in Hampshire to vuddle is to spoil a child by injudicious petting. And don’t we all know someone who’s crambazzled (Yorkshire), prematurely aged through drink and a dissolute life?

  Like English itself, my research hasn’t stopped at the shores of the Channel. How about a call-dog (Jamaican English), a fish too small for human consumption or a twack (Newfoundland English) a shopper who looks at goods, inquires about prices but buys nothing. Slang from elsewhere offers us everything from a waterboy (US police), a boxer who can be bribed or coerced into losing, to a shubie (Australian), someone who buys surfing gear and clothing but doesn’t actually surf. In Canada, a cougar describes an older woman on the prowl for a younger man, while in the US a quirkyalone is someone who doesn’t fall in love easily, but waits for the right person to come along.

  Returning to the mainstream, it’s good to know that there are such sound English words as rumblegumption, meaning common sense, or ugsomeness, loathing. Snirtle is to laugh in a quiet, suppressed or restrained manner, while to snoach is to speak through the nose. If you are clipsome, you are eminently embraceable; when clumpst, your hands are stiff with cold. To boondoggle is to carry out valueless work in order to convey the impression that one is busy, while to limbeck is to rack the brain in an effort to have a new idea.

  As for whiffling, well, that turned out to be a word with a host of meanings. In eighteenth-century Oxford and Cambridge, a whiffler was one who examined candidates for degrees, while elsewhere a whiffler was an officer who cleared the way for a procession, as well as being the name for the man with the whip in Morris dancing. The word also means to blow or scatter with gusts of air, to move or think erratically, as well as applying to geese descending rapidly from a height once the decision to land has been made. In the underworld slang of Victorian times, a whiffler was one who cried out in pain, while in the cosier world of P.G. Wodehouse, whiffled was what you were when you’d had one too many of Jeeves’s special cocktails.

  As a self-confessed bowerbird (one who collects an astonishing array of sometimes useless objects), I’ve greatly

enjoyed putting together all three collections. I sincerely hope that you enjoy reading them, and that they save you both from mulligrubs, depression of spirits, and onomatomania, vexation in having difficulty finding the right word.

  In compiling all three books I’ve done my level best to check the accuracy of all the words included, but any comments or even favourite examples of words of your own are welcomed at the book’s two websites: for foreign languages www.themeaningoftingo.com – and for English www.thewonderofwhiffling.com (There were some very helpful responses to my previous books, for which I remain grateful.)

  Adam Jacot de Boinod

  Acknowledgements

  I am deeply grateful to the following people for their advice and help on all three books: Giles Andreae, Martin Bowden, Joss Buckley, Candida Clark, Anna Coverdale, Nick Emley, Natasha Fairweather, William Hartston, Beatrix Jacot de Boinod, Nigel Kempner, Nick and Galia Kullmann, Kate Lawson, Alf Lawrie, John Lloyd, Sarah McDougall, Yaron Meshoulam, Tony Morris, David Prest and David Shariatmadari.

  In particular I must thank my agent, Peter Straus, my illustrator Sandra Howgate, my editor at Penguin, Georgina Laycock; and Mark McCrum for his invaluable work on the text.

  The Meaning of Tingo

  Meeting and Greeting

  ai jiao de maque bu zhang rou (Chinese)

  sparrows that love to chirp won’t put on weight

  ¡Hola!

  The first and most essential word in all languages is surely ‘hello’, the word that enables one human being to converse with another:

  aa (Diola, Senegal)

  beeta (Soninke, Mali, Senegal and Ivory Coast)

  bok (Croatian)

  boozhoo (Ojibwe, USA and Canada)

  daw-daw (Jutlandish, Denmark)

  ella (Awabakal, Australia)

  i ay (Huaorani, Ecuador)

  khaumykhyghyz (Bashkir, Russia)


На основании Вашего запроса эти примеры могут содержать грубую лексику.


На основании Вашего запроса эти примеры могут содержать разговорную лексику.

было слово

есть слово

существовало слово


But if ever there was a word in my silence, you would hear it.



Но даже если бы в моём молчании было слово, ты бы услышал его.


I wish there was a word that meant complete satisfaction and complete self-loathing.



Я бы хотела, чтобы было слово, которое означало бы полное удовлетворение и полное отвращение к себе.


For centuries, trained stage magicians and untrailed snake charmers and con artists used the methods without ever knowing there was a word for it.



В течение многих веков обученные сценические фокусники, неопытные заклинатели змей и мошенники использовали методы, даже не зная, что для этого есть слово.


I never knew there was a word for that feeling, nor was it possible for a boy to become a girl, so I never told anyone and I just continued to do traditionally «boyish» things to try to fit in.



Я никогда не знала, что для этого есть слово, и никогда мальчик не мог стать девочкой, так что я ни с кем об этом не говорила и просто продолжала делать обычные «мальчуковые» вещи, пытаясь соответствовать.


I wish there was a word with an even greater meaning than love.


If there was a word better than awesome, I would use that word.



Если бы существовало слово, определяющее нечто лучшее, чем самое лучшее, мы бы использовали его здесь.


In the beginning there was a word, remember?


Therefore I am very pleased that they chose «And there was a word» as the first part.



Поэтому мне было очень приятно, что первой частью они выбрали «И было слово».


On the other hand, there was a word, like,


If only there was a word out there you could say to him.



Если бы было слово, которое ты мог бы сказать ему.


At the beginning there was a word, and the word was 2 bytes, and there was nothing else.



Вначале было слово, и слово было 2 байта, а больше ничего не было.


If you come to the end of a page and do not remember what you have read then there was a word on the page that you did not understand.



Если ты дошёл до конца страницы и не помнишь, что ты прочитал, значит, на этой странице было слово, которое ты не понял.


In Ancient India, there was a word Atman (or Atma) which denotes «one and indivisible».



Например, в Древней Индии было слово Атман (также Атма) в качестве обозначения «единого и неделимого».


Listen, there was a word written inside the matchbook — «cinnamon212.»



Слушай, в упаковке спичек было слово — корица212.


In the Latin there was a word


I did not, at this time, even know that there was a word for these odd occurrences.


I wish there was a word to describe the pleasure I feel at viewing misfortune.



Хотел бы я, чтобы нашлось слово, чтобы описать удовольствие, испытываемое мной при виде неудачи.


Due to a printing error, there was a word in the English dictionary from 1932 to 1940 which didn’t have a meaning.



С 1932 по 1940 год из-за типографской ошибки в словаре английского языка присутствовало слово, у которого не было значения.


Mr. NOBEL said that there was a word missing from the first line which should read «land rights of indigenous populations».



Г-н НОБЕЛЬ говорит, что в первой строке пропущено одно слово, и она должна звучать следующим образом: «земельных прав коренного населения».


And if there was a word wrongly written or even a letter incorrect the writing on the stones would remain there.



И если одно слово было написано неправильно, даже если всего одна буква была неверной, слова на камнях не исчезали.

Ничего не найдено для этого значения.

Результатов: 34. Точных совпадений: 34. Затраченное время: 151 мс

Documents

Корпоративные решения

Спряжение

Синонимы

Корректор

Справка и о нас

Индекс слова: 1-300, 301-600, 601-900

Индекс выражения: 1-400, 401-800, 801-1200

Индекс фразы: 1-400, 401-800, 801-1200

From ‘shotclog’, a Yorkshire term for a companion only tolerated because he is paying for the drinks, to Albanian having 29 words to describe different kinds of eyebrows, the languages of the world are full of amazing, amusing and illuminating words and expressions that will improve absolutely everybody’s quality of life. All they need is this book!

This bumper volume gathers all three of Adam Jacot de Boinod’s acclaimed books about language — The Wonder of Whiffling, The Meaning of Tingo and Toujours Tingo (their fans include everyone from Stephen Fry to Michael Palin) — into one highly entertaining, keenly priced compendium. As Mariella Frostup said ‘You’ll never be lost for words again!’

    GenresNonfictionLanguageLinguisticsReferenceHumorWritingHistory

800 pages, Paperback

First published August 5, 2010



About the author

Adam Jacot de Boinod is a British author, notable for his works about unusual words, such as his last name. Usually known as Jacot, he has written three books, the first two looking at words which have no equivalent in the English language, and his third book which reveals unusual words in English.



Displaying 1 — 6 of 6 reviews

Profile Image for Lavinia.

746 reviews817 followers

August 29, 2014

I wish there was a way of remembering everything I wanted to. I started taking notes at the beginning, but I gave up pretty soon. Unfortunately, the last third (when you’re really pissed by its length) is — subjectively speaking- the most interesting.

    2011 in-en non-fiction

Profile Image for Rhian Davies.

1 review3 followers

February 1, 2013

I bought this book because I am a massive word geek and I am currently running a blog about strange and obscure words. It’s a fascinating read, however I was disappointed to find several mistakes. One of the Welsh words mentioned (lledorweddle) should be ‘lledorwedd’, while the full spelling of Llanfair PG (you know the one) was incorrect. These, along with a few other examples, made me wonder how many other words were incorrect throughout the book. But maybe my pedantry stems from the fact that I am a Linguistics graduate, and so I don’t think anyone should be put off buying the book if they are a little interested in strange words.

It is a very humorous book and a wonderful insight into other cultures. Despite its flaws, I would recommend it.


Profile Image for Michelle Bacon.

401 reviews31 followers

August 1, 2019

This book is a combination of the 3 books by this author and is basically a hodge-podge of unique words or phrases that we have used over the course of human existence and their origins. One of the books is foreign phrases which were difficult to read since I didn’t know how to pronounce the words. I think having the pronunciation next to the words or phrases would have been a little helpful but would have been even more like a dictionary than it already was.
Cute and informative tho.

    reference

Profile Image for Dorin Budusan.

29 reviews28 followers

Want to read

October 11, 2010

Although I didn’t read all of it, it’s a really funny book, from which you will learn a lot of funny words and all kinds of languages, words that you will probably never use.

    my-bookshelf

Profile Image for Kerry.

144 reviews3 followers

March 30, 2015

Did you know there are words for snow in 5 different languages? There is a lot of that in here which is not very interesting. Did you know there are words in other languages which sound like English words but are false cogitates. Yeah, that was even less interesting. There were far too many lists of these sorts of things in here.

Basically, the only thing that kept me reading (a few pages at a time over probably 18 months) was the sections on idioms. The variety of ways different cultures express things was more what I was hoping to get from this book in general. And then the last 1/10th of the book got better because it was all dedicated to idioms in English.


February 23, 2022

Extraordinary. For a language enthusiast like me this collection was a real delicacy. It amused me, suprised me, made me laugh, made me wonder, and made me want to explore more. And made me want to share with the author a few words and expressions from Hungarian, my mother tongue.

Displaying 1 — 6 of 6 reviews


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