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Review
You'll never be lost for words again. Truly enlightening --MARIELLA FROSTRUP
Charming, bizarre and interesting... Help is at hand for anyone who has ever struggled to find the right word --THE INDEPENDENT
Weird and wonderful..test your knowledge of the extraordinariness of English --THE GUARDIAN
Extraordinary and intriguing examples of how English continues to be the most quirky language in the world --THE TELEGRAPH
The best wacky -- but genuine -- words in English
--THE SUN
Charming, bizarre and interesting... Help is at hand for anyone who has ever struggled to find the right word --THE INDEPENDENT
Weird and wonderful..test your knowledge of the extraordinariness of English --THE GUARDIAN
Extraordinary and intriguing examples of how English continues to be the most quirky language in the world --THE TELEGRAPH
The best wacky -- but genuine -- words in English
--THE SUN
Product Description
The Wonder of Whiffling is a hugely enjoyable, surprising and rewarding tour of English around the globe (with fine coinages from our English-speaking cousins across the pond, Down Under and elsewhere).Discover all sorts of words you've always wished existed but never knew, such as fornale, to spend one's money before it has been earned; cagg, a solemn vow or resolution not to get drunk for a certain time; and petrichor, the pleasant smell that accompanies the first rain after a dry spell.
Delving passionately into the English language, Adam Jacot de Boinod also discovers why it is you wouldn't want to have dinner with a vice admiral of the narrow seas, why Jacobites toasted the little gentleman in black velvet, and why a Nottingham Goodnight is better than one from anywhere else.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
A little too heavy on the 'oh look at this funny word' and too light on the etymology. I wasn't looking for atext book, was looknig for entertainment but thought the balance just a little too lightweight.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I love this book, it's fun and lighthearted, and really informative. Much more than just a list of unusual words and their meanings, the author's managed to make it interesting and very readable. It would appeal to a wide range of people, and is a great xmas present. It could be paired with the first book - The Meaning Of Tingo - also lots of fun.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3 reviews
Gave my wife the giggles
7 Feb 2012
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Good and fun book, my wife has spent a lot of time reading and re-reading. It was shipped quickly and packed well. If I could only find time to read it too.
6 of 10 people found the following review helpful
From the Tulgey Wood: Jacot's 'The Wonder of Whiffling:
2 Dec 2009
Format:Hardcover
Word-lovers hunger for facts About Language. In books like this, however, they are served lexical junk-food. Beguiled reviewers take M Jacot's words as his own. He copies from dictionaries, so he can blame them. His count of Albanian words for eyebrow and mustache sounds like the story of all those Eskimo words for snow. Some refinement of the data is in order.
Smoking and Whiffling. M Jacot makes a confused gloss on "smoking":
"In feudal times, drink actually meant to "smoke tobacco." Feudal Europe -- from A.D. 800 to the 1400s -- I needn't tell you, knew not tobacco. The first Americans indeed spoke of "drinking" tobacco. But in their sauna or sweat-lodge Bronze Age and earlier Eurasians, too, sucked up fumes from plants such as cannabis. After 1492 the Spanish took up the tobacco pipe from, of course, the American Indians. From Spain Muslims took up the habit and translated the words into Arabic. So, during Ramadan the cops in Cairo will bust you if they catch you smoking tobacco (too) before sundown, since in the fasting month the Koran proscribes day-time eating or "drinking" The same Arabic verb serves for orally inhaling fluids or fumes.
WHIFFLER. Swaggerers were dubbed whifflers. Even the august Oxford English Dictionary makes a mess of things sometimes. Taking whiffler as "one who whiffles" is an inversion of history. The old nouns in -er are not from verbs but from nouns. The noun here is "whiffle". In Old English a "wifel" (pronounced wiffle) is an ax; in Middle English it's written wyfle. Whifflers were ceremonial bearers of whiffles - axes. On Google see the resplendent Swiss Guards or London Tower Beefeaters with their glinting halberds. Imposing ax-toters cut a fine figure in court processions. The same word in German is "Weibel"; for a sergeant-at-arms; "Feldwebel" is a corporal in the army.
What whiffling meant in England George Borrow tells us in 1857 in "Romany Rye":
"Nobody can use his fists without being taught the use of them, ... no more than any one can `whiffle' without being taught by a master of the art... The last of the whifflers hanged himself about a fortnight ago ... there being no demand for whiffling since the discontinuation of Guildhall banquets; ... let any one take up the old chap's sword and try to whiffle."-- The sorry whiffler, before his art went out of fashion, was a flashy performer with blades.
Did whiffling also mean "smoking"? As guests were departing after a fine Christmas dinner many years ago, a kid I knew cried bitterly disappointed to his mother: "You said we were having company for Christmas. You cooked turkey." The OED editor of the entry WHIFFLE duplicated the boy's logic when he defined whiffling as smoking. OED's glossar was thrown into confusion like the kid with his turkey when Horace Smith in "Tin Trumpet" (1869) compared feeble little volcanoes to mighty Aetna and Vesuvius. The point of comparison in Smith's metaphor was not the smoke-belching of the eruption, but the awe, or lack of it. To stogie-puffing pettifoggers a cigar is not just a cigar.
Smoking and Whiffling. M Jacot makes a confused gloss on "smoking":
"In feudal times, drink actually meant to "smoke tobacco." Feudal Europe -- from A.D. 800 to the 1400s -- I needn't tell you, knew not tobacco. The first Americans indeed spoke of "drinking" tobacco. But in their sauna or sweat-lodge Bronze Age and earlier Eurasians, too, sucked up fumes from plants such as cannabis. After 1492 the Spanish took up the tobacco pipe from, of course, the American Indians. From Spain Muslims took up the habit and translated the words into Arabic. So, during Ramadan the cops in Cairo will bust you if they catch you smoking tobacco (too) before sundown, since in the fasting month the Koran proscribes day-time eating or "drinking" The same Arabic verb serves for orally inhaling fluids or fumes.
WHIFFLER. Swaggerers were dubbed whifflers. Even the august Oxford English Dictionary makes a mess of things sometimes. Taking whiffler as "one who whiffles" is an inversion of history. The old nouns in -er are not from verbs but from nouns. The noun here is "whiffle". In Old English a "wifel" (pronounced wiffle) is an ax; in Middle English it's written wyfle. Whifflers were ceremonial bearers of whiffles - axes. On Google see the resplendent Swiss Guards or London Tower Beefeaters with their glinting halberds. Imposing ax-toters cut a fine figure in court processions. The same word in German is "Weibel"; for a sergeant-at-arms; "Feldwebel" is a corporal in the army.
What whiffling meant in England George Borrow tells us in 1857 in "Romany Rye":
"Nobody can use his fists without being taught the use of them, ... no more than any one can `whiffle' without being taught by a master of the art... The last of the whifflers hanged himself about a fortnight ago ... there being no demand for whiffling since the discontinuation of Guildhall banquets; ... let any one take up the old chap's sword and try to whiffle."-- The sorry whiffler, before his art went out of fashion, was a flashy performer with blades.
Did whiffling also mean "smoking"? As guests were departing after a fine Christmas dinner many years ago, a kid I knew cried bitterly disappointed to his mother: "You said we were having company for Christmas. You cooked turkey." The OED editor of the entry WHIFFLE duplicated the boy's logic when he defined whiffling as smoking. OED's glossar was thrown into confusion like the kid with his turkey when Horace Smith in "Tin Trumpet" (1869) compared feeble little volcanoes to mighty Aetna and Vesuvius. The point of comparison in Smith's metaphor was not the smoke-belching of the eruption, but the awe, or lack of it. To stogie-puffing pettifoggers a cigar is not just a cigar.
0 of 5 people found the following review helpful
The Wonder of Whiffling
19 Jan 2010
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Highly amusing book, delivered promptly to Australia sooner than promised.
One small issue was that, while the book is clearly new, the cover is slightly marked--probably bruised during shipping--and the person receiving it as a gift may think it is second-hand.
One small issue was that, while the book is clearly new, the cover is slightly marked--probably bruised during shipping--and the person receiving it as a gift may think it is second-hand.
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