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.
Faux Pas?
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Great book, and an important one in this global village we now live
in. One quibble from the American side of the Pond. Most of the
context statements are from British papers, and some of the references
are hard to understand for us Yankees. Case in point: Gooden cites a
piece from the Guardian newspaper in the UK for the Japanese term
"hara kiri" (Japanese ritual suicide), and the sentence from the UK
paper goes: "Politically, any school remaining bog standard nowawdays
in committing hara-kiri." So what does bog standard mean? We need
another book guide to Britishisms! In the meantime, this book is no
faux pas at all, but a ters bon good one.
in. One quibble from the American side of the Pond. Most of the
context statements are from British papers, and some of the references
are hard to understand for us Yankees. Case in point: Gooden cites a
piece from the Guardian newspaper in the UK for the Japanese term
"hara kiri" (Japanese ritual suicide), and the sentence from the UK
paper goes: "Politically, any school remaining bog standard nowawdays
in committing hara-kiri." So what does bog standard mean? We need
another book guide to Britishisms! In the meantime, this book is no
faux pas at all, but a ters bon good one.
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
A fun reminder that it is all too easy to be lazy when communicating and make avoidable confusion . Get it right!
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3.0 out of 5 stars
1 review
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
DECENT, AVERAGE, OKAY, BUT STILL DISAPPOINTING
3 Nov 2012
By G. Charles Steiner
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
Do you really not know mazeltov or mea culpa?
If you're a teenager or never went to college, you'll definitely get a lot out of this book, but, for those adults who read at least at 10th grade level and have at least one college degree, many of the foreign words and phrases in this book are de facto ordinary words most people with an average college education do pick up through having studied at least one other language or through their variegated and wide reading.
While there are Jewish words, Spanish words, Latin words as well as some Persian, German and Italian words ("passegiata" for walk or stroll), most of the words, as the title indicates, are French words like "malaise" and "bourgeois." Not really the kind of French phrases that require a special or separate book purchase.
There are some stunning, elevated and pretentious words, words to match a million-dollar vocabulary, but these are rare. "Reculer pour mieux sauter" is indeed a rare and pretentious French phrase, and its value is -- utterly useless.
Each word or phrase is used in a sentence so that the reader can know how to apply the phrase or understand how it is used. Each word or phrase is described phonetically so that you (au fond -- at bottom) can avoid sounding like an idiot when uttering these words which might help you feel you are "au courant" with the language of international diplomacy.
If you're a teenager or never went to college, you'll definitely get a lot out of this book, but, for those adults who read at least at 10th grade level and have at least one college degree, many of the foreign words and phrases in this book are de facto ordinary words most people with an average college education do pick up through having studied at least one other language or through their variegated and wide reading.
While there are Jewish words, Spanish words, Latin words as well as some Persian, German and Italian words ("passegiata" for walk or stroll), most of the words, as the title indicates, are French words like "malaise" and "bourgeois." Not really the kind of French phrases that require a special or separate book purchase.
There are some stunning, elevated and pretentious words, words to match a million-dollar vocabulary, but these are rare. "Reculer pour mieux sauter" is indeed a rare and pretentious French phrase, and its value is -- utterly useless.
Each word or phrase is used in a sentence so that the reader can know how to apply the phrase or understand how it is used. Each word or phrase is described phonetically so that you (au fond -- at bottom) can avoid sounding like an idiot when uttering these words which might help you feel you are "au courant" with the language of international diplomacy.
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