Let a Simile Be Your Umbrella

by Terry Allen and William Safire

William Safire, America’s favorite writer on language, offers a new collection of pieces drawn from his nationally syndicated “On Language” column. Laced with liberal (a loaded word, but apt) doses of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0609609475
• ISBN13: 9780609609477
• Release Date: November 2001
• Publisher: Crown Publishing Group (NY)
• Length: 388 Pages
• Weight: 1.56 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

A Language Enthusiasts? Delight

Whether you're an amateur or professional wordsmith, William Safire's latest book will give you plenty to ponder. The book consists of 370 pages of essays and excerpts from columns, often accompanied by amusing letters from readers and critics. The essays are organized alphabetically by subject, with a comprehensive index to help you locate Safire's comments on a particular topic.So jump right in an encounter a "delicious dialectic discovery" or examples of grammatical corruption, or a masterpiece of obfuscation. Get ready to do some etymological detective work. Position yourself as a pop grammarian and word maven. Become a lexicographer, neologic Nellie, word nerd, phrasedick or amateur etymologist. Join the Gotcha! Gang who are obsessed with accuracy and a lust for catching error in others. Push some grammatical envelopes, enjoy elegant locutions and give proper obeisance to sloppy usage that has reached the refuge of idiom. The examples of misused or obscure words and creative grammar range from the mildly interesting to the hysterically funny. Have you ever analyzed the lexicon of layoff including the terms downsized, rightsized, cashier, discharge, sack, bounce, give the heave-ho, can, rif, ax, walking papers, restructure, re-engineer, work-force imbalance correction and just plain fired? Have you ever contemplated the difference between a flap, a caper and a scandal? Find out the origin of noogies and wedgies. Learn about the Irish history of "shenanigans". Review the difference between prone and supine. No public figure is immune from criticism, including presidents, first ladies, actors and television personalities. Safire also includes plenty of letters from readers pointing out his errors. Too bad the book was compiled before "W's" ascension to the presidency. Surely Safire's collection of George's blunders and bloopies is growing day by day.Safire's collection will remind you that our language is a living, evolving volatile organism representative of our culture and place in history. I highly recommend this book to anyone curious or interested about language trends.

A Box Full of Joy! by fermed

Ah, yes! Chocolate truffles, maybe. With each that you consume there is an intense pleasure followed by the realization that one less truffle remains in the box. I got the same feeling as I read through this book. It contains 229 (or maybe 230 if I miscounted) little essays, some no more than a paragraph or so long, others extending several pages, followed occasionally by commentaries from readers of the "On Language" colums with which Safire has been regaling the nation since 1979. The essays are arranged alphabetically by title, and not by date of publication (in fact the publication dates are nowhere to be seen) which makes the mixture all the more appealing. Thus the first one ("Adultery and Fraternization") is no closer chronologically to us than the last ("On Zeenes and Mags"). At least I don't think it is.The title of the book derives from a column by the same name, which starts by analyzing "anomaly," checks in on the difference between "arcane" and "archaic," touches on "plunk," and finally tells us about Sen. Faircloth's colorful similes: "like eating ice cream with a knitting needle," "like skinning a hippopotamus with a letter opener," and "like teaching a kangaroo to do the limbo."The comments made by his readers can be both profound and hilarious. Following a essay on Fowler's two revisions (of all things), F. J. Ortner took exception: "You stated that "tergiversation" comes from the Latin for "turning back." I think that should have been "turning the back." The word comes from "tergum," the back, and "versare" or "vertere," to turn. "Tourner le dos" instead of "reculer." Oh, my!Following an essay on words and phrases used to describe nutsiness and madness, Nina Garfinkel of New York, pointed out a couple of expressions which Safire included in the book, and which I have appropriated for my own use: "He's out there where the buses don't run," and "the cheese fell of his cracker a long time ago."This is a wonderful book to give to anyone with a love for words and thoughts and knowledge and humor. It is full of extraordinary flavors and textures, it is funny and serious, and a grand entertainment.