Table of Contents
Preface xvii
A Turn-up for the Books 1
A Game of Chicken 3
Hydrogentlemanly 4
The Old and New Testicle 6
Parenthetical Codpieces 8
Suffering for my Underwear 10
Pans 11
Miltonic Meanders 13
Bloody Typical Semantic Shifts 16
The Proof of the Pudding 19
Sausage Poison in Your Face 20
Bows and Arrows and Cats 23
Black and White 25
Hat Cheque Point Charlie 27
Sex and Bread 30
Concealed Farts 33
Wool 35
Turkey 39
Insulting Foods 42
Folk Etymology 43
Butterflies of the World 45
Psychoanalysis and the Release of the Butterfly 47
The Villains of the Language 51
Two Executioners and a Doctor 52
Thomas Crapper 55
Mythical Acronyms 59
John the Baptist and The Sound of Music 62
Organic, Organised, Organs 64
Clipping 65
Buffalo 66
Antanaclasis 69
China 71
Coincidences and Patterns 72
Frankly, My Dear Frankfurter 75
Beastly Foreigners 76
Pejoratives 78
Ciao Slave-driver 80
Robots 81
Terminators and Prejudice 83
Terminators and Equators 85
Equality in Ecuador 86
Bogeys 88
Bugbears and Bedbugs 89
Von Munchausen's Computer 92
SPAM (not spam) 94
Heroin 96
Morphing De Quincey and Shelley 97
Star-Spangled Drinking Songs 100
Torpedoes and Turtles 102
From Mount Vernon to Portobello Road with a Hangover 105
A Punch of Drinks 106
The Scampering Champion of the Champagne Campaign 109
Insulting Names 111
Peter Pan 114
Herbaceous Communication 117
Papa Was a Saxum Volutum 119
Flying Peters 121
Venezuela and Venus and Venice 123
What News on the Rialto? 124
Magazines 126
Dick Snary 128
Autopeotomy 131
Water Closets for Russia 135
Fat Gunhilda 137
Queen Gunhilda and the Gadgets 139
Shell 140
In a Nutshell 141
The Iliad 143
The Human Body 145
The Five Fingers 146
Hoax Bodies 149
Bunking and Debunking 151
The Anglo-Saxon Mystery 153
The Sedge-strewn Stream and Globalisation 157
Coffee 160
Cappuccino Monks 162
Called to the Bar 163
Ignorami 165
Fossil-less 168
The Frequentative Suffix 171
Pending 173
Worms and their Turnings 174
Mathematics 176
Stellafied and Oily Beavers 178
Beards 180
Islands 182
Sandwich Islands 186
The French Revolution in English Words 190
Romance Languages 191
Peripatetic Peoples 193
From Bohemia to California (via Primrose Hill) 195
California 197
The Hash Guys 200
Drugs 203
Pleasing Psalms 204
Biblical Errors 207
Salt 210
Halcyon Days 212
Dog Days 213
Cynical Dogs 215
Greek Education and Fastchild 216
Cybermen 218
Turning Trix 220
Amateur Lovers 221
Dirty Money 223
Death-pledges 224
Wagering War 226
Strapped for Cash 227
Fast Bucks and Dead Ones 228
The Buck Stops Here 230
Back to Howth Castle and Environs 232
Quizzes 235
The Cream of the Source 251