Oddities And Curiosities Of Words And Literature

Why do word puzzles fascinate us? How do they help develop problem-solving skills? How do they teach us about geography, literature, sports, and popular culture? How are they an international language? Jonathan Berkowitz offers a brief history of wordplay, with insights into puzzles and the brain. He offers tips on how to solve puzzles and explains the educational value of puzzles. Challenges in the form of rebuses, anagrams, codes and cryptograms, crosswords, and wordplay with numbers supply even more fun! The Whirl of Words is a unique, rich, and intriguing tour of a wide variety of word puzzles certain to stimulate a brain work-out.

Literature in English is hardly ever entirely in English. Contact with other languages takes place, for example, whenever foreign languages are introduced, or if a native style is self-consciously developed, or when aspects of English are remade in the image of another language. Since theRenaissance, Latin and Greek have been an important presence in British poetry and prose. This is partly because of the importance of the ideals and ideologies founded and elaborated on Roman and Greek models. Latin quotations and latinate English have always been ways to represent, scrutinize, orsatirize the influential values associated with Rome. The importance of Latin and Greek is also due to the fact that they have helped to form and define a variety of British social groups. Lawyers, Catholics, and British gentlemen invested in Latin as one source of their distinction fromnon-professionals, from Protestants, and from the unleisured. British attitudes toward Greek and Latin have been highly charged because the animus that existed between groups has also been directed toward these languages themselves. English Literature and Ancient Languages is a study of literaryuses of language contact, of English literature in conjunction with Latin and Greek. While the book's emphasis is literary, that is formal and verbal, its goal is to discover how social interests and cultural ideas are, and are not, mediated through language.

A fun and frolicking book of wordplay. - Hundreds of acrostics, anagrams, palindromes, puns, riddles, and spoonerisms - Presented in lively prose and light verse - Features a chapter of skill-testing word games

Martin Gardner's Mathematical Games columns in Scientific American inspired and entertained several generations of mathematicians and scientists. Gardner in his crystal-clear prose illuminated corners of mathematics, especially recreational mathematics, that most people had no idea existed. His playful spirit and inquisitive nature invite the reader into an exploration of beautiful mathematical ideas along with him. These columns were both a revelation and a gift when he wrote them; no one--before Gardner--had written about mathematics like this. They continue to be a marvel. This volume was originally published in 1989 and contains columns from published 1976-1978. This 1997 MAA edition contains three new columns written specifically for this volume including the resurrection of the lamented Dr. Matrix.

Welcome to the Weird and Wonderful World of Words! Tyrannosaurus Lex is your guide to the intriguing world of logology—the pursuit of word puzzles or puzzling words—featuring: •A wealth of witty anagrams, palindromes, and puns •Clever paraprosdokians: sentences with surprising endings (“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it.”—Groucho Marx) •Fascinating oronyms: a pair of phrases that differ in meaning and spelling, yet share a similar pronunciation (“The stuffy nose can lead to problems” versus “The stuff he knows can lead to problems.”) •Peculiar oxymora: words or phrases that are self-contradictory (Jumbo shrimp! Guest host! Gold silverware!) So sit back and get ready to learn about everything from antigrams and aptanagrams to kangaroo words and phantonyms. You’ll never look at language the same again!