Ohio author Ralph Keyes’ ‘Euphemania’ is a fun history of how and why we mince our words So why in the world would wildlife officials actually kill any of the detestable, projectile-vomiting, double-crested cormorants violating the Lake Erie islands when they could “effectively manage the flock” to get the same result? And who among us …
Super Punch
Super Punch The new book I Love It When You Talk Retro: Hoochie Coochie, Double Whammy, Drop a Dime, and the Forgotten Origins of American Speech by Ralph Keyes about slang sounds (and looks) great. You can read an interview with Keyes here. One fun nugget from the interview: I was surprised to find out …
Unusual suspects: When phrases give up the ghost
Boston Globe, May 3, 2009
VERIFIABLY EXCELLENT
From Amazon.com 5 Stars Paul Kocak (Syracuse) I was so impressed with a newspaper feature on Ralph Keyes’s The Quote Verifier that I ordered the book right away. I was not disappointed. There are few books I have ever encountered that are more thoroughly researched — and so entertaining. The book is either a conversation …
National Post (Canada)
April 4, 2009 Our everyday speech is filled with arcane references we don’t even know we’re making, terms Ralph Keyes calls verbal fossils. Examples include “cooties” (a term for body lice that afflicted First World War soldiers while fighting in the trenches), “reading between the lines” (derived from people writing secret messages in invisible ink …
Silver Wolf – Literary Commentary
Ralph Keyes is releasing a new book, called I Love it When You Talk Retro. Detailing the history of cultural slang and the evolution of popular phrases. As a word nerd, I’d probably end up buying this just for fun if I saw it at a bookstore.