Unfortunate English

Unfortunate English: The Gloomy Truth Behind the Words You Use
By Bill Brohaugh
ISBN 1-58297-443-8
Available November 2006

Experience the Dark Side of the English Language

What sensitivities are you secretly offending when you use the words poppycock, bonfire, and porcelain? What political incorrectness are you courting when you describe someone or something as ethnic? Who have you insulted, what sensitivity have you jostled, what breach of propriety have you committed when you use such remarkably innocent words as butterfly, gymnasium, and fizzle?

Unfortunate English uncovers older meanings of words that are out of joint with almost everyone’s sense of propriety — word histories that reveal the deintensification of the disgusting, the generalization of the ribald, the mutation of the offensive, and occasionally the sensationalizing of the innocent.

So pick up this book and start having fun — or maybe you shouldn’t, considering that fun originally meant … well, something different.

About the Author

Bill Brohaugh is the author of Write Tight, about concision in writing (ISI Books), and The Grill of Victory, a profile of the competition barbecue circuit (Emmis Books). For Writer’s Digest Books, he is the author or editor of Professional Etiquette for Writers, English Through the Ages and Just Open a Vein. He has written several hundred published or produced magazine articles and short radio pieces. He can spell “eclectic.”

Table of Contents

Introduction
THEM’S FIGHTIN’ WORDS!
Words of War and the Battlefield

IT PAINS ME TO SAY
Words of Assault, Torture, Bloodletting,
and Death

RHYMES WITH “DEAD”
CAUGHT READ-HANDED
Words of Crime and Punishment

YOU’RE SO PRETTY,
AND OTHER OBNOXIOUS INSULTS
Words of Hidden Deprecation,
Derogation, and Degradation

EXHUMING THE BODY
Not-So-Private Conversations About Private Parts,
Bodily Fluids, and Sex

IF WE ONLY KNEW WHAT IS ISSUING
FROM OUR MOUTHS
Words of Bodily Function and Dysfunction

AND THIS IS WHAT WE PUT
INTO OUR MOUTHS?
Words of Food and Drink and Taste (and Lack Thereof)

I AM NOT AN ANIMAL!
I AM AN ETYMOLOGIST!
Words of the Birds and the Beasts

MISCELLANEOUS DISGUISES AND SURPRISES
Words That Start and End
with Double-ewwww!

AFTER WORDS
Parting Thoughts

Selected Bibliography
Index