Unmentionables: From Family Jewels to Friendly Fire - What We Say Instead of What We Mean - Hardcover

'An entertaining, informative and fantastically rude little book' -- Daily Mail 'Ralph Keyes is right: We are crazy about euphemisms. For good reasons and bad, euphemisms help us speak the unspeakable, describe what cannot, in decent society (if only we lived in one!), be described. Those are not rings of fat around my waist; that's my spare tire. Or, should you want to know me better, just grab my love handles. Hang on tight and we'll ride through the wise and witty work of a writer who handles his love for the language on every page. ' -- Roy Peter Clark, author of Writing Tools and The Glamour of Grammar. Keyes's treatment of our everyday attempts to ameliorate through language the unpleasantries of life is brilliant - and a great read -- Tom Dalzell, author of The Slang of Sin and Flappers 2 Rappers It is beautifully written, uniformly delightful, and a pleasure to read. Keyes has spread a broad net and offers the tastiest morsels to his readers. I love this book! -- Rosalie Maggio, author of How to Say It and The Art of Talking to Anyone If "Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne," as Quentin Crisp once said, then Ralph Keyes has given word and language lovers a deeply fragrant-and thoroughy enjoyable-book. -- Dr. Mardy Grothe, author of /Oxymoronica /and other quotation anthologies Fascinating! Ralph Keyes opens the reader to a new world of thoughtfulness, embarrassment, manipulation, and even criminality through euphemisms. While much of the book is just plain funny, one cannot help but develop a new respect for the complexity of our language and for our amazing inventiveness as we cope with every imaginable situation by avoiding the truth. An engrossing, amusing and highly informative read. -- Richard Farson, author of Management of the Absurd Praise for I LOVE IT WHEN YOU TALK RETRO -- : 'One of the most entertaining reference books of all time' -- Herald Times 'A handy collection' -- Boston Globe 'It's both funny and fun to discover where ... phrases come from' -- Los Angeles Times 'Keyes has done a spectacular job ... I LOVE IT WHEN YOU TALK RETRO is a fascinating read' -- Knoxville News Sentinel Praise for I LOVE IT WHEN YOU TALK RETRO -- : 'One of the most entertaining reference books of all time' -- Herald Times 'A handy collection' -- Boston Globe 'It's both funny and fun to discover where ... phrases come from' -- Los Angeles Times 'Keyes has done a spectacular job ... I LOVE IT WHEN YOU TALK RETRO is a fascinating read' -- Knoxville News Sentinel

We say a lot about ourselves by what we don't say. Words and phrases like 'collateral damage', 'wardrobe malfunction', 'vertically challenged', and old favourites like 'unmentionables' (trousers, apparently) or 'lady of the night' - all are ways of not using particular words. UNMENTIONABLES is a rollicking exploration of the history of euphemistic usage, looking at how taboos connected to sex, death, religion, war, politics, business and matters of status have produced an extraordinary linguistic creativity, and how euphemistic speech has changed over the centuries. It looks at how euphemisms are born, and how they die (or 'experience a negative outcome') and it explores why it is that we create euphemisms, and the different purposes - from the benign to the sinister - that they serve. (Is 'euphemism' a euphemism for lying?) Lively, entertaining, and crammed with fascinating nuggets of information, UNMENTIONABLES is a celebration of the richness of language. Why have just one word for something when you can have ten other words instead?