Spinglish
  • Published: 2 June 2015
  • ISBN: 9780698179011
  • Imprint: PEN US eBook Adult
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 368
Categories:

Spinglish

The Definitive Dictionary of Deliberately Deceptive Language

Formats & editions
EBook
2 Jun 2015
Hardback
29 Jul 2015
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Spinglish—the devious dialect of English used by professional spin doctors—is all around us. And the fact is, until you’ve mastered it, politicians and corporations (not to mention your colleagues and friends) will continue putting things over on you, and generally getting the better of you, every minute of every day—without your even knowing it.
            However, once you perfect the art of terminological inexactitude, you’ll be the one manipulating and one-upping everyone else! And here’s the beauty part: Henry Beard and Christopher Cerf, authors of the New York Times semi-bestseller The Official Politically Correct Dictionary and Handbook, have compiled this handy yet astonishingly comprehensive lexicon and translation guide—a fictionary, if you will—to help you do just that. If you want to succeed in business (or politics, sports, the arts, or life in general) without really lying, this is the book for you! (Your results may vary.)
            Spinglish includes these nifty bits of spurious verbiage and over a thousand more:
 
aesthetic procedure – face-lift
dairy nutrients – cow manure
enhanced interrogation techniques – torture
 “For your convenience.” – “For our convenience.”
hands-on mentoring – sexual relations with a junior employee
incomplete success – failure
rightsizing – firing people
zero-tasking – doing nothing
 
            With each and every entry sourced from some of the greatest real-life language benders in the world today, you’re virtually guaranteed to have the perfectly chosen tried-and-untrue term right at the tip of your forked tongue. Wish you could nimbly sidestep a question without batting an eye? Not sure how to apologize while also . . . not apologizing? Spinglish has you covered. Simply consult this convenient, shoot-from-the-lip glossary, and before you know it, you’ll be telling it like it isn’t, it wasn’t, and it couldn’t ever have been.
  • Published: 2 June 2015
  • ISBN: 9780698179011
  • Imprint: PEN US eBook Adult
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 368
Categories:

About the authors

Christopher Cerf

CHRISTOPHER CERF is an author, composer-lyricist, record and television producer, editor, and cofounder and president of the educational television production company, Sirius Thinking, Ltd. Since its first season in 1970, Cerf has played a pivotal role in the creation and production of the “Sesame Street” television program, most notably as a regular contributor of music and lyrics. He has won three Grammy Awards and three Emmy Awards for songwriting and music production. He just won a Grammy for the Best Spoken Word Album for Children and has been nominated for two Daytime Emmy Awards for his work on “Between the Lions.”

Praise for Spinglish

Praise for Encyclopedia Paranoiaca (co-authored by Beard and Cerf):
"Be afraid: Henry Beard and Christopher Cerf's Encyclopedia Paranoiaca is deadly to the humor averse." (Vanity Fair)

"Encyclopedia Paranoiaca . . . [is] the only guide to super-paranoia that you'll ever need. . . .While the authors' tongues couldn't be more firmly in cheek from first entry to last, Encyclopedia Paranoiaca is written and compiled with scrupulous attention and extensive research. . . . Start worrying now." (The Scientific American)

"An amusing and cruelly accurate cultural critique, offering a "comprehensive and authoritative inventory of the perils, menaces, threats, blights, banes, and other assorted pieces of Damoclean cutlery" that hover over our collective head. . . . Beard and Cerf gleefully fan the flames of our paranoia." (The Wall Street Journal)

"A humorous look at all of the ways, obvious and not, that humans have of doing harm to themselves. . . . The writing is witty and verbose, almost Monty Python-ish, but the science is good enough that hypochondriacs should be shielded from this book at all costs." (The Daily Beast)

"The madcap brainchild of National Lampoon alums Henry Beard and Christopher Cerf, Encyclopedia Paranoiaca comprises a smartly researched, apocalyptic alphabet of exotic and everyday dangers and dreads--from bananas to fracking to sleeping on your back--that is scary, amusing, and informative." (Elle)

"Perversely enjoyable." (Details magazine (No. 1 in "Five Things We Emphatically Endorse"))

"What we think is healthful and harmless may well be deadly, or at least harmful, say the humorists. They've compiled a long list of everyday foods (cherries, carrots), clothing (skinny jeans, flip-flops) and items (drinking straws) that we can now worry about like never before. Thanks, guys." (The Sacramento Bee)

"As two founders of the National Lampoon, Henry Beard and Christopher Cerf are responsible for some of the sharpest satirical humor of the past forty years. Their latest opus is a tongue-through-the-cheek encyclopedia of modern neuroses -- a work that will both confirm all your fears, then dispel them with fits of laughter." (B&N Review)

"Despite its presentation of contemporary dangers, the book is charmingly old-fashioned, with a structure and format that pay tribute to the reference books that lined the shelves of academics and nerds before the Internet reshaped the personal library. . . . Beard and Cerf write with wit in this ironic take on a world where we live in constant fear of dairy products, lemon wedges, shopping carts, and vitamins." (Publishers Weekly)