Name Dropping: Darwinian Struggles, Oedipal Feelings, and Kafkaesque Ordeals---an A to Z Guide to the Use of Names in Everyday Language - Hardcover

Gooden, Philip

2.5

8 ratings by Goodreads

9780312377397: Name Dropping: Darwinian Struggles, Oedipal Feelings, and Kafkaesque Ordeals---an A to Z Guide to the Use of Names in Everyday Language

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312377398 ISBN 13: 9780312377397

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2008

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Have you ever had a Hitchcockian experience (in the shower, perhaps?) or met someone with a distinctly Ortonesque outlook on life? What exactly do we mean when we describe a scene as Dickensian, or when we call a politician€™s style Churchillian or Thatcherite? What would you call a romantic, brooding, dangerous, and untamed person? Heathcliffian? Byronesque? How about a situation that is nightmarish, torturously bureaucratic, and impossible to escape from? Kafkaesque, maybe? Is Nixonian or Gandalf-like part of your vocabulary? There are hundreds of words derived from real people who are famous---or infamous---enough to give their stamp to a movement, a way of thinking or acting, a style or even a mood. Name Dropping is the essential guide to the better known or more intriguing of these terms from figures in politics, sports, and the arts, as well as history and the classics. It is both for those readers looking for definitions or simply browsing for plea

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About the Author:

Philip Gooden read English at Oxford and taught for many years. His other publications include Who’s Whose: A No-Nonsense Guide to Easily Confused Words and Faux Pas: A No-Nonsense Guide to Words and Phrases From Other Languages. Gooden is also the author of the Nick Revill series, historical mysteries set around Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. He is the winner of the HRH Duke of Edinburgh English Speaking Union’s English Language Award for 2006 and lives in London.

Review:

Praise for Philip Gooden’s Faux Pas and Who’s Whose

“An approachable and even fun set of insights into hundreds of phrases readers may want to use in their writings.” ---California Bookwatch

“Learning a foreign language has never been so much fun. Faux Pas . . . is a small-sized treatise on all those foreign phrases that are casually tossed in by authors who assume everyone understands them. Unfortunately, most of the time the readers are left completely in the dark. Faux Pas attacks this problem with intelligence and humor. Gooden’s book is a sprightly romp through common foreign phrases from Latin, German, French, Chinese, Russian, Welsh, Yiddish, and others.” ---Tish Wells, Knight Ridder, AP Wire Service

“An enjoyable read; Gooden’s opinions about word usage are at once serious and amusing. Recommended.” ---Library Journal

“A genuinely useful reference book that deserves a handy place on the desk of everyone who wants to use the right word for the job.” ---Ian Mayes, The Guardian (UK)

“A useful handbook to the booby traps that lie in wait for us all.” ---The Independent on Sunday (UK)

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