The Meaning Of Liff

The Meaning of Liff has sold hundreds of thousands of copies since it was first published in 1983, and remains a much-loved humour classic. This edition has been revised and updated, and includes The Deeper Meaning of Liff, giving fresh appeal to Douglas Adams and John Lloyd's entertaining and witty dictionary. In life, there are hundreds of familiar experiences, feelings and objects for which no words exist, yet hundreds of strange words are idly loafing around on signposts, pointing at places. The Meaning of Liff connects the two. BERRIWILLOCK (n.) - An unknown workmate who writes 'All the best' on your leaving card. ELY (n.) - The first, tiniest inkling that something, somewhere has gone terribly wrong. GRIMBISTER (n.) - Large body of cars on a motorway all travelling at exactly the speed limit because one of them is a police car. KETTERING (n.) - The marks left on your bottom or thighs after sunbathing on a wickerwork chair. OCKLE (n.) - An electrical switch which appears to be off in both positions. WOKING (ptcpl.vb.) - Standing in the kitchen wondering what you came in here for.

A rollicking, thought-provoking dictionary for the modern age, featuring definitions for those things we don't have words for, from the New York Times bestselling author behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams, and TV producer John Lloyd. Does the sensation of Tingrith(1) make you yelp? Do you bend sympathetically when you see someone Ahenny(2)? Can you deal with a Naugatuck(3) without causing a Toronto(4)? Will you suffer from Kettering(5) this summer? Probably. You are almost certainly familiar with all these experiences but just didn’t know that there are words for them. Well, in fact, there aren’t—or rather there weren’t, until Douglas Adams and John Lloyd decided to plug these egregious linguistic lacunae(6). They quickly realized that just as there are an awful lot of experiences that no one has a name for, so there are an awful lot of names for places you will never need to go to. What a waste. As responsible citizens of a small and crowded world, we must all learn the virtues of recycling(7) and put old, worn-out but still serviceable names to exciting, vibrant, new uses. This is the book that does that for you: The Deeper Meaning of Liff—a whole new solution to the problem of Great Wakering(8) 1—The feeling of aluminum foil against your fillings. 2—The way people stand when examining other people’s bookshelves. 3—A plastic packet containing shampoo, mustard, etc., which is impossible to open except by biting off the corners. 4—Generic term for anything that comes out in a gush, despite all your efforts to let it out carefully, e.g., flour into a white sauce, ketchup onto fish, a dog into the yard, and another naughty meaning that we can’t put on the cover. 5—The marks left on your bottom and thighs after you’ve been sitting sunbathing in a wicker chair. 6—God knows what this means 7—For instance, some of this book was first published in Britain twenty-six years ago. 8—Look it up yourself.

A liff is a familiar object or experience that English has no word for. Afterliff, its long-awaited sequel, corrects this disgraceful oversight by recycling the names found on signposts. This brilliant successor to Douglas Adams' and John Lloyd's 1983 classic The Meaning of Liff features over 900 essential new definitions, including: Anglesey n. Hypothetical object at which a lazy eye is looking. Badlesmeare n. One who dishonestly ticks the 'I have read and agree to the Terms and Conditions' box. Caterham n. An overwhelming desire to use the Pope's hat as an oven glove. Clavering ptcpl v. Pretending to text when alone and feeling vulnerable in public. Eworthy adj. Of a person: worth emailing but not worth phoning or meeting. Kanumbra n. The sense that someone is standing behind you. Ljubljana interj. What people say to the dentist on the way out. Loughborough n. The false gusto with which children eat vegetables in adverts. Sorrento n. The thing that goes round and round as a YouTube video loads. Uralla n. A towel used as a bathmat. In 1983, John Lloyd and Douglas Adams authored The Meaning of Liff, a bestselling humour classic which went on to sell hundreds of thousands of copies. John Lloyd's other books include 1,411 QI Facts To Knock You Sideways and The Book of General Ignorance.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Misconceptions, misunderstandings, and flawed facts finally get the heave-ho in this humorous, downright humiliating book of reeducation based on the phenomenal British bestseller. Challenging what most of us assume to be verifiable truths in areas like history, literature, science, nature, and more,The Book of General Ignorance is a witty “gotcha” compendium of how little we actually know about anything. It’ll have you scratching your head wondering why we even bother to go to school. Think Magellan was the first man to circumnavigate the globe, baseball was invented in America, Henry VIII had six wives, Mount Everest is the tallest mountain? Wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong again. You’ll be surprised at how much you don’t know! Check out The Book of General Ignorance for more fun entries and complete answers to the following: How long can a chicken live without its head? About two years. What do chameleons do? They don’t change color to match the background. Never have; never will. Complete myth. Utter fabrication. Total Lie. They change color as a result of different emotional states. How many legs does a centipede have? Not a hundred. How many toes has a two-toed sloth? It’s either six or eight. Who was the first American president? Peyton Randolph. What were George Washington’s false teeth made from? Mostly hippopotamus. What was James Bond’s favorite drink? Not the vodka martini.

'Yorkshire Liff' twins some of the obscurely wonderful, often unheard of and wastefully under-used place names of Yorkshire, with the numerous experiences, feelings, situations and objects which we all know but, for some reason, have no words attributed to them.

"Now a BBC America TV series event"--Cover.

March 1978 saw the first ever transmission of Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on BBC Radio 4; the beginning of a cult phenomenon. March 2020 marks the 42nd anniversary of that first transmission – 42 being the answer, of course, to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. To mark the occasion, Pan Macmillan are bringing back into print The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Original Radio Scripts with a brand-new introduction from Simon Jones. The collection also includes the previously 'lost' Hitchhiker script from the 25th anniversary edition, 'Sheila's Ear' and the original introductions by producer Geoffrey Perkins and Douglas Adams. This collection, which is a faithful reproduction of the text as it was first published in 1985, features all twelve original radio scripts – Hitchhiker as it was written and exactly as it was broadcast for the very first time. They include amendments and additions made during recordings and original notes on the writing and producing of the series by Douglas Adams and Geoffrey Perkins. For those who have always loved Douglas Adams, as well as for his new generation of fans, these scripts are essential reading and a must-have piece of Adams memorabilia. This special anniversary edition will sit alongside reissued eye-catching editions of the five individual Hitchhiker books coming in May 2020: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Life, the Universe and Everything, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish and Mostly Harmless.

Douglas Adams will be most fondly remembered for the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series and its idiosyncratic humour. But this biography covers his life from his days as a struggling sketch writer to his untimely death at the age of 49 in May 2001.