Prover, sayings, and other expressions are commonly used every day !They're words that are so familiar, however, that their real meanings have been either lost or confused over the years. For instance, who hasn't wished to be "as free ass a bird"?However, our feathered friends are not carefree.In fact, most birds are pretty anxious creatures with a lot of responsibility. When someone says, "One bad apple spoils the barrdl," it means that no mater how good you are, if someone bad enters your group, it's going to be spoiled. While this may not hold true for all people, it does for apples. When an apple starts to rot ,it produces a chemical called ethylene that cfauses the apple to decay. The other apples in the barrdl detect this chemical reaction and begin to produce their own ethylene, causing all the apples to spoil. "All that glitters is not gold."Anyone who has even seen pyrite, or fool's gold, knows this to be true. Has it ever really rained "cats and dogs"?In 1984,during a rainstorm, part of

This exciting wordbook is full of egu catching photos that will keep gou and your little ones talking for hours. It is the perfect introduction to more than 1000 everyday words.

Welcome once again to the wonderful world of Chinglish! Perhapsyou'd like to start your trip by checking in to the Resist BacteriaHotel? Once you get settled, it's time for supper. May we suggestthe binaural infected cucumber? It's really quite delicious. Andafter supper, how about a night on the town? But remember: novoting in the pool! Oliver Lutz Radtke is the author of Chinglish:Lost in Translation. He works as a multimedia producer and editorin Beijing. Cover designed by theBookDesigners

Not so long ago, writes Jeremy Paxman, the English were "polite, unexcitable, reserved, and had hot-water bottles instead of a sex-life". Today the end of empire has killed off the Bulldog Breed - "fearless and philistine, safe in taxis and invaluable in shipwrecks" - and transformed the great public schools. Princess Diana was mourned with the effusive emotionalism of an Italian saint. Leader-writers in "The Times" even praise the sexual skills of English lovers ...So what are the defining features of "Englishness"? How can a country of football hooligans have such an astonishingly low murder rate? Does the nation's sense of itself extend to millions of black, Asian and other immigrant Britons? Is it grounded in arrogant, nostalgic fantasy or can it form the basis for building a realistic future within Europe? To answer these crucial questions, Paxman looks for clues in the English language, literature, luke-warm religion and "curiously passionless devotion" to cricket. He explores attitudes to Catholics, th

Chinglish offers a humorous and insightful look at misuses ofthe English language in Chinese street signs, products, andadvertising. A long-standing favorite of English speaking touristsand visitors, Chinglish is now quickly becoming a culture relic: inpreparation for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, the Chinesegovernment was determined to wipe out incorrect English usage.

New edition! A practical personal writing adviser. Coverage includes punctuation, capitalization, possessives, and compound words, with a special chapter on quotations. Students will especially appreciate guidance on preparing footnotes, endnotes, and bibliographies.

Compiled from G.L. Apperson's original and painstaking research of nearly three thousand works dating as far back as the twelfth century and earlier, and built upon the foundations of the great Oxford English Dictionary, the Dictionary of Proverbs traces the origins and history of English proverbs and proverbial phrases. The original author has avoided the purely aphoristic and moral, which have little claim to proverbial use, and has codified this notoriously verbal rather than literary form in a way which earned the gratitude of the compilers of the Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs. The proverbs are grouped alphabetically and by subject, with copious cross-references throughout, rendering the dictionary as great a joy to consult as it is to browse through. This new edition includes over 500 new entries covering new examples, such as The customer is always right, There's no such thing as a free lunch, If it ain't broke, don't fix it, Life is too short to stuff a mushroom, and The family that prays togethe