Philip Gooden

Winner of the HRH Duke of Edinburgh English Speaking Union English Language Book Award 2006. An award winning language book, this is a lively and engaging expose on the foreign words and phrases that populate our language. Each entry gives a translation of the expression, the language of origin, pronunciation, an insightful comment on usage, plus illuminating examples from the press. A Pretentiousness Index will help you avoid committing the ultimate faux pas(!). If you have ever been bamboozled by the use of a foreign word or phrase, or simply want to spice up your vocabulary with some well chosen bons mots, then this is the book for you. Thousands of foreign terms have been absorbed into the English language from the everyday (kowtow) to the relatively obscure (auto-da-fe). Faux Pas? focuses on familiar terms and expressions as well as those that are new, curious or amusing.

Idiomantics is a unique exploration of the world of idiomatic phrases. The very etymology of the word 'idiom' reveals what's so endlessly fascinating about the wide range of colourful phrases we use in everyday speech: their peculiarity. They're peculiar both in the sense of being particular or unique to the culture from which they originate, and in the sense of being downright odd. To cite three random examples - from American English, Dutch and Italian - what on Earth are a snow job, a monkey sandwich story, and Mr Punch's secret? Fascinating and illuminating, Idiomantics explains all...The ideal gift for word buffs and in fact, anyone who enjoys a good yarn, this playful book looks at 12 groups of idioms around the world, looking at subjects such as fun and games, gastronomic delights and the daily grind.

What is the shade of difference between Sod's Law and Murphy's Law? What is the Helsinki Bus Station Theory? What part do the McNaughton Rules and the Miranda Law play in criminal justice? Plenty of books claim to tell you how to succeed in life, love or business with infallible sets of guidelines and self-help principles, but have nothing to say about the laws - often hidden ones - which really govern our lives. Skyscrapers, Hemlines and the Eddie Murphy Rule is an anthology of the many quirky, useful or entertaining rules and principles, which, if they are well known, crop up without explanation or, if confined to specialist circles, deserve to be more widely understood and appreciated. Here is a deliberately diverse scrapbook of the attempts to provide a system and an explanation, whether serious or humorous, eccentric or plain mischievous, for human activity across politics, science, sport, economics, the Internet, work, and life itself.