Presents pronunciations and definitions for common terms often misrepresented in oral and written communication.

The definitive pronouncement on more than 1,500 of our most commonly mispronounced words. From the language maven Charles Harrington Elster comes an authoritative and unapologetically opinionated look at American speech. As Elster points out, there is no sewer in connoisseur, no dip in diphthong, and no pronoun in pronunciation. The culmination of twenty years of observation and study, The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations is more than just a pronunciation guide. Elster discusses past and present usage, alternatives, analogies, and tendencies and offers plenty of advice, none of it objective. Whether you are adamant or ambivalent about the spoken word, Elster arms you with the information you need to decide what is acceptable for you. The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations has now been expanded and revised and features nearly 200 new words, including: al-Qaeda bruschetta commensurate coup de grace curriculum vita exacerbate gigabyte hara-kiri machismo Muslim Niger Pinochet Pulitzer sorbet tinnitus w (as in www-dot) and many, many more. Charles Harrington Elster is the pronunciation editor of Black's Law Dictionary and the author of various books about language, including Verbal Advantage, There's a Word for It, and What in the Word? He has been a guest columnist on language for the Boston Globe and the New York Times Magazine and a commentator on NPR and hundreds of radio shows around the country.

Have you been guilty of catachresis* at work? Have you defenestrated* your dictionary in frustration? Do you have phloem bundles* stuck in your diastema*? Scratching your occiput* now? Rod L. Evans's Thingamajigs and Whatchamacallits will help take the mystery out of some of our most obscure words. Containing hundreds of words from agitron (the phenomenon of wiggly lines in comic strips indicating that something is shaking) to zarf (the holder for a paper cone coffee cup), this lively reference will enable you to easily locate your thingamajig or whatchamacallit, be it animal, vegetable, mineral, or punctuation mark. Leave no linguistic oddity unexamined-your brain will thank you. *catachresis: strained, paradoxical, or incorrect use of a word; *defenestrate: to throw out a window; *phloem bundles: stringy bits between the skin and the edible parts of a banana; *diastema: the gap between teeth in a jaw; *occiput: the back part of the head or skull