Englisc, 163
English (the language), 163 English dictionarie, or an interpreter of hard English words, The, 186 entomology, 170 eponyms, 83 Eskimo, 70 Espy, Willard, 224 Etruscan, 183 Etymologia Mythica, 1, 93 etymology, 23, 101, 170 a grain-fed one, 25 asinine, 175 bad etymology, 59 big cheese, 129 bonfire, 7
eponyms, 85 gardenia, 19 gorp, 63 hogwash, 176 honeymoon, 91
in relation to acronyms, 56-58
not entomology, 86
snob, 78
teetotaler, 25
testify, 90
thesaurus, 170
three dog night, 70
villain, 45
etymythology, 64, 68 Everything You Know
About Aramaic Is Wrong, 103 About English Is Wrong, 66, 75 about French is wrong, 99 About Sign Language Is Wrong,
61
exclamation point, 214
false etymology, 58, 63, 77
Family Shakespeare, The, 85
Far From the Madding Crowd, 35, 216
Ferguson, Myriam A., 101
Fight for English, The, 151, 224
figurative, 157
Fine Print, 127
Finnegans Wake, 100, 165
first person, 41
Fish Cheer, 62
Fishkill, New York, 90
Fogerty, John, 200
folk etymology, 55, 63, 93
Everything You Know About English Is Wrong
237
A.D., 13
and the horse you rode in on, 63
buttonhole, 134
fired, 93
hangnail, 130
history, 6
leading to mistakes, 128 For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, 62 Fosbury, Dick, 158 fossil, 35
Fowler, F.G. and Henry W., 144 Fowler’s Modem English Usage, 144 Franklin, Benjamin, 154, 181, 194 Freeman, Edward A., 155 French, 7, 18, 20, 24, 54, 89,128,197 adjective, 164 ammunition, 30 bon/boon, 7 coup de grace, 205 herbivore, 202 isle, 132 millionaire, 75 triage, 27
word words, 163, 164, 191 funwords.com, 225 Gadsby, 69, 73 Garden, Alex, 19 Garvinus, 215
German, 74, 77,101, 162, 196 Gerry, Elbridge, 85 Gershwin, George and Ira, 205 ghoti, 99 Gilbert, Bil, 29 Gilligan’s Island, 132
Golden Rule of English Rules, 30 Goodword, Dr., 207 Graecum est; non potest legi, 100 Grafton, Sue, 183, 194 grammar, 37, 140, 147, 201, 211 and a nother thing!, 122 as related to bowling, 140 damner, 37
good grammar, youse guys, 162 gymnastics, 201 in baseball (yeah, sure), 40 in song lyrics, 200 in the middle of nonsense, 80 indefinite articles, 42 invoking sermon doom, 115 rules to be broken, 45 specious rules, 143 thatched, 94, 95 Grammatically Correct, 224 Grease (the musical), 204 Greek, 100, 139,171,183, 187 comma, 173 democracy, 31 dialogue, 26 gringo, 101 historia, 6 hoi polloi, 29 hydra, 8 hyphen, 167 it cannot be read, 100 it’s all Hellenic to me, 148 kudos, 150 oxymoron, 168 thesauros, 171
2 3 8
Bill Brohaugh
to Me, It’s All, 100 “Green Grow the Lilacs,” ioi Grill of Victory, The, 89 Guys and Dolls, 202 Hardy, Thomas, 35, 216 Harrison, George, 189 Harrison, Rex, 175 Hellenic, 148 Henry the VII, 93 Herman’s Hermit’s, 93 hieroglyphics, 213
Historical and architectural sketches, 155 History of Rome, 24 Hitchcock, Alfred, 65 Hobbes, Thomas, 115 Holland, Philemon (hey, I didn’t name him), 24
Hoover, Herbert (not Erbert), 42 Horace, 169
“Horse With No Name,” 201 How the Mind Works, 124 Hydrologie, 74 hyper-foreignization, 205 hyphen, 167 hyphens, 1 66 1 ’45
I before E except after C, 45, 46 I-Defer-to-a-More-Articulate-Wag Defense, 41 indefinite articles, 42 Indo-European, 91
infin/itives (or, “split infinitives—just seeing if you’re paying attention),
140, 142, 143
infix, 143
Inside Mr Enderby, 165 intemetspeak, 211 inter-not-ymologies, 68 Iraq, 186
It All Started With Columbus, 223 It’s all Greek to me, 29,100 J.D. Johnssen Business Miniplex and All-Night Dry Cleaners (since this doesn’t exist. I’m curious about why you’re looking it up), 158 Jagger, Mick, 201 James I, King, 93 James, Dr. Daniel, 100 Japanese, 10, 11 Jesus Christ, 101
Johnson, Samuel, 7, 24, 70, 98, 197 Joint National Committee on Language, 101
Jolie, Angelina (naked—OK, not really), 95 Jones, Chuck, 177 Joyce, James, 100, 165 Jude the Obscure, 216 Juilland, Alphonse, 208 Julius Caesar, 100 Jutes, 164
Kaddafi, Muammar, 17 Kell, Joseph, 165
Kevin (yeah, you’re in here, kid), 137 Kilpatrick, James J., 127 King and I, The, 146 King Arthur, 195 King James, 93
Everything You Know About English Is Wrong
239
knock-knock joke, 49 Knowles, Leo, 113 Koster, Ron, 186 L.A. Story, xi
Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste, 74 Language Instinct, The, 224, 200 Las Vegas, 30
Latin, 19, 20, 139, 140, 142, 178, 183, 186, 187, 199 A.D., 12
abbreviations, 145,147 alphabet, 183 centrum/theatrum, 197 clvus, 130 comma, 173 debt, 151 deca, 154 dialogue, 26
English-Latin compendium, 70 et, 188
infinitives, 143 manus, 135 mas, 13
pedal/plantar, 9 penis (stop snickering), 18 personal inability to translate, 22 porcine, 178
priests transliterating, 189 rubbish, I say, rubbish!, 72 sequipedalian, 169 sic, 67
sine nobilitate, 78 stips, 65
subject of reverence, 139
testis, 91 thesaurus, 171 vocal, 191 word words, 163 you don’t speak it, 139 “Lay Down Sally,” 200 “Lay Lady Lay,” 200 Lederer, Richard, 125, 224, 225 Lennon, John, 189
“Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off,” 205 “Liar!,” 70
Life in the 1500s (and the mocking thereof), 94 ligature, 181, 188 Lincoln, Abraham, 98 linguistic terminology, 172 Linnaeus, Carolus, 199 lipogram, 69 Listener, The, 114 Lite beer, 156 literal, 157
Little Engine That Could, The, 128 Livy, 24
Lombardo, Guy, 103
Lowth, Bishop Robert, 123, 139
Lynch, Captain Charles, 85
Macadam, John, 23
Maher, J.P., 60
Malayalam, 74
Man and Superman, 99
Martin, Steve, xi
Marx, Groucho, 97
Marx, Harpo, 97
Maven’s Word of the Day, 225
240
Bill Brohaugh
McCartney, Paul, 189 Medieval Latin, 100 Merriam-Webster New Book of Word Histories, 224 metanalysis, 127 Mickey Mouse Club, 51 microparse, 1 Middle Dutch, 196 Middle English, 14, 165, 189, 192, 196, 211 crevisse, 137 He, 132 luke, 35 nother, 122
Middle French, 132,163 Miller Brewing Company, 156 mistakes, 127 mnemonics, 45, 71 Mom-ism, 152 MONEYtalks Magazine, 215 Monty Python, 216 and the Holy Grail, 195 and the Verbal Grail, 127 Moody Blues, 210
Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins, 224
Morris, Evan, 92, 120, 225 Morris, William and Mary, 65, 101, 224
Morse Code, 77 Mouseketeers, 51 Mr. Language Person, 223 Mr. Peanut, 9 Mr. Wizard, 8
Munchhausen, Hieronymous Karl Friedrich von, 75 Murphy, Eddie, 175 Murray, James, 164 Music Man, The, 25 nadsat, 165 Napoleon, 77 Nash, Ogden, 223
Natchez Naturalist Newsletter, The, 137 National Puzzlers’ League, 169 New Oxford American Dictionary, 138 New Scientist magazine, 83 Newhart, Bob, 98 Nixon, Richard, 106 nonce-word, 164 Nottingham University, 82 notymology, 68 oed.com, 224 Of Mice and Men, 103, 206 Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, The, 186 OJ’s glove, 106 Oklahoma! (the musical), 204 Old English, 132, 178, 189,192,196, 204
a word you’ll recognize, 218 agnail, 130
Anglo-Saxon/Old Germanic, 164 bwg, 87
child and related plurals, 211
chill, 22
eats, 125
English, 163
eth/ D, 187
Everything You Know About English Is Wrong
241
gray, 180 igland, 34 life, 156 mistle, 136 nother, 122 sheet, 16 sheriff, 73 shit, 56 P, 184 writer, 197
Old French, 14, 18, 93, 191 bouler, 5 isle, 132 male, 13 outre, 14 repleniss, 135 resoun, 16 trier, 27 vouel, 191 Old Frisian, 196 Old Norse, 180 Old North French, 19, 149 orthography, 182 Orwell, George, 175, 177 Our Marvelous Native Tongue, 224 Oxford English Dictionary, n, 23, 31,
61, 69, 130,164, 169, 173, 186, 217, 224
oxymoron, 168 palindrome, 74 Pascal, Blaise, 99 Pasteur, Louis, 85 Peanuts, 23, 64 Pei, Mario, 99
“Penthouse Pauper,” 200 People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, 90
Periodical Table of the Elements, 8 Persian, 129 PETA, 90
Phoenician, 182, 183,186 pictograms, 213
Piemont-Marton, Dr. Elizabeth, be Pinker, Steven, 124, 200, 202, 224 platypus (damn!), 75 plurals, 37, 210
pornography (boy, that got your attention, didn’t it?, 184 Portuguese, 11 prefix, 27, 93,143 Preston, Billy, 189 Preston, England, 26 Preston, Robert, 26 Proto-European, 56 Pygmalion, 99 Quecha, 22
Quinion, Michael, 87, 100, 224 Quisnam blandior?, 140 Raspe, Rudolf Erich, 75 Rawlinson, Graham, 83 Rawson, Hugh, 59, 224 Reading Teachers Book of Lists, Third Edition, The, 218
redundancy, 29, 30, 32,35, 98,107,