With a foreword by Victoria Coren
If you're pleased, are you chuffed or made up? Why are swear words so shocking when Chaucer was writing them in the middle ages? And what part did Shakespeare, the Bible and the boxing ring play in creating words and phrases?
English has inherited and borrowed words from invaders over the centuries with astonishing and reckless promiscuity. Balderdash and Piffle celebrates this rich diversity of words.
From words and phrases first recorded by Shakespeare to the more modern influence of other languages such as Hindi - from which we get Pyjamas, Pukka and Cashmere - this is a fascinating insight into English, the language understood by over 700 million people across the globe.
But it is not just other languages that have influenced English.
Showbusiness and sport have played their part, giving us everyday phrases such as stealing someone's thunder, and old chestnut, which was first used in a play in 1816. Music gave us blowing your trumpet, while sport and particularly boxing are rich sources. To hit below the belt is unsporting to the extreme and any opponent would hope to be saved by the bell and up to scratch.
It is surprising how many modern words have been around longer than you might imagine, with Wonderbras first appearing in 1947 and nightclubbing appearing in a 1941 travel guide to Havana.
Wicked was first used in its modern 'excellent' sense in the 1920's, and Balderdash and Piffle provides a fascinating selection of words which have undergone an interesting and unexpected journey from what they originally meant to what they mean today.
Writer, humourist and word-sleuth Alex Games, provides an entertaining look at English words, with journalist Victoria Coren, who presents the television series Balderdash & Piffle, providing the foreword.
If you've ever wondered who first used cuppa in print, which language gave us shampoo and when we started saying window, as well as what Shakespeare had to say about geeks and why berk is really really rude you'll find it all inside this book.
Published: 5 January 2006
ISBN: 0563 493336 4
Price: £12.99
Editors Notes:
About the Author
Alex Games is a writer and journalist. Most recently, he wrote and presented a Comedy Archive programme called "Not Funny At All" on Radio 4 in October 2005, as well as writing sketches for Radio One's late night/early morning sketch show "The Milk Run".
He read Classics at Cambridge before joining the staff of the Literary Review magazine, then GQ, and then the London Evening Standard where he was its comedy critic and feature writer.
He performed as a stand-up comedian in the year 2000. He has also written many features and interviews for the Guardian, Sunday Times, Independent on Sunday, Financial Times and Scotsman. He has twice been a guest on Ned Sherrin's "Loose Ends", upon publication of his two earlier biographies of Pete Cook & Dudley Moore (1999) and Alan Bennett (2001).
Alex Games speaks Spanish and is learning Arabic. He is a cyclist and self-confessed tree-hugger.
About Balderdash & Piffle, BBC Two
Balderdash and Piffle is a major new series for BBC Two exploring the hidden histories behind words, and recruits the nation's help to try to solve some of the most intriguing mysteries in the English language.
Victoria Coren will present the series from Oxford, home of the Oxford English Dictionary. A host of language-lovers will be travelling the world, each on the trail of a different word.
Jerry Hall will be twirling her swizzlestick as she contemplates the origin of the word cocktail, Ian Hislop will be examining the ever-baffling jargon that is management-speak and Daniella Nardini will get her tongue twisted round a delightful ninety-nine.
Ever wondered about ploughman's lunch, codswallop, bingo or boffin? We have the answers.
About the Wordhunt
The OED and BBC began the Wordhunt in June 2005 to find the origins of numerous words and phrases. To submit information to the project visit bbc.co.uk/wordhunt or email wordhunt@bbc.co.uk.
About the Oxford English Dictionary
The OED published by the Oxford University Press is the accepted authority on the evolution of the English language over the last millennium. It is an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, history and pronunciation of 600,000 words, both present and past. It traces the usage of words through 2.5 million quotations from a wide range of sources, from classic literature and specialist periodicals to film scripts and cookery books.
The OED covers words from across the English-speaking world, from North America to South Africa.
The Second Edition of the OED is available as a 20-volume print edition, on CD-Rom and now also online at www.oed.com.
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external websites.
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