Charles Earle Funk's Books

Thereby Hangs a Tale

By: Charles E. Funk

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The Greek root of school means leisure. A language where hearse and rehearse have the same root and the word dunce comes from a great philosopher, English has hundreds of every day words that originated or acquired their meaning in unusual ways. Dictionaries don't have the space to tell us all the mysteries, but now Dr. Funk, with humor and insight, tells us the strange and intriguing stories of hundreds of words and how they came to be a part of our language.

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Page Count

320

Publisher

Harper Paperbacks

Published Date

ISBN 10

006272049X

ISBN 13

9780062720498

Horsefeathers and Other Curious Words

By: Charles E. Funk

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Horsefeathers and Other Curious Words

By: Charles E. Funk

The serious purpose of this book is, then, to supplement the dictionary, to fill gaps where filling seems to be warranted and to supply explanations for many of the curious words the significance of which is not evident from the parts that compose them. But as I do not think that a reference work need be a dry-as-dust compilation; it has been my aim to provide a little fillip of entertainment

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Page Count

256

Publisher

Harper Paperbacks

Published Date

ISBN 10

0062733532

ISBN 13

9780062733535

Horsefeathers

& Other Curious Words

By: Charles E. Funk

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Horsefeathers

& Other Curious Words

By: Charles E. Funk

Oh, horsefeathers! If you've ever wondered why the candy is called butterscotch; why a certain southern food is called a hush puppy; why tog supports in a fireplace are known as andirons, or sometimes firedogs, you'll be fascinated by the origins of the more than 600 words discussed in "a book that gets curiouser and curiouser as it goes along" (Son Francisco Chronicle).

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256

Publisher

William Morrow Paperbacks

Published Date

ISBN 10

0060513373

ISBN 13

9780060513375

A Hog on Ice

By: Charles E. Funk

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A Hog on Ice

By: Charles E. Funk

Traces the sources of over four hundred expressions and sayings used in everyday speech.

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Page Count

224

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Harper Paperbacks

Published Date

ISBN 10

0060912596

ISBN 13

9780060912598

Thereby Hangs a Tale - Stories of Curious Word Origins

By: Charles Earle Funk

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Thereby Hangs a Tale - Stories of Curious Word Origins

By: Charles Earle Funk

THIS book is the outcome of a collection of material that has been slowly accumulating over the past thirty years or so, since the time when, under the guidance of the late Dr. Frank H. Vizetelly, I began to work as his associate in the editorial department of the Funk & Wagnalls New Standard Dictionary. The ancestry of most of the words that we now use glibly or find in books or other current literature, is prosaic. We can trace their lines of descent back to Old English, or Old French, or Latin, or Greek, or other ancient source, but beyond the bare bones supplied by etymologists, which indicate those sources, and the steps by which they became English words, the dictionaries tell us little—for there is little more that can be told. The ancient Roman or Greek, say, who may have been the first to use a word that has strayed on to us, perhaps could have told the story of its origin. It may have been picturesque, based upon some historic episode, like the word anecdote; it may have come from a tale in some older language, for the languages that we consider ancient were themselves based upon still more ancient sources, but that story, if any, cannot now be determined. Thus what we know about the origins of the great majority of the words in our present language can be found in an unabridged dictionary or in a work dealing with etymologies, such as that compiled by W. W. Skeat about seventy years ago, or the one more recently prepared by Ernest Weekley.

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Page Count

350

Publisher

Read Books Ltd

Published Date

ISBN 10

1447495853

ISBN 13

9781447495857

The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations

The Complete Opinionated Guide for the Careful Speaker

By: Charles Harrington Elster

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The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations

The Complete Opinionated Guide for the Careful Speaker

By: Charles Harrington Elster

The definitive pronouncement on more than 1,500 of our most commonly mispronounced words. From the language maven Charles Harrington Elster comes an authoritative and unapologetically opinionated look at American speech. As Elster points out, there is no sewer in connoisseur, no dip in diphthong, and no pronoun in pronunciation. The culmination of twenty years of observation and study, The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations is more than just a pronunciation guide. Elster discusses past and present usage, alternatives, analogies, and tendencies and offers plenty of advice, none of it objective. Whether you are adamant or ambivalent about the spoken word, Elster arms you with the information you need to decide what is acceptable for you. The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations has now been expanded and revised and features nearly 200 new words, including: al-Qaeda bruschetta commensurate coup de grace curriculum vita exacerbate gigabyte hara-kiri machismo Muslim Niger Pinochet Pulitzer sorbet tinnitus w (as in www-dot) and many, many more. Charles Harrington Elster is the pronunciation editor of Black's Law Dictionary and the author of various books about language, including Verbal Advantage, There's a Word for It, and What in the Word? He has been a guest columnist on language for the Boston Globe and the New York Times Magazine and a commentator on NPR and hundreds of radio shows around the country.

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Page Count

548

Publisher

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published Date

ISBN 10

061842315X

ISBN 13

9780618423156

Thereby Hangs a Tale - Stories of Curious Word Origins

By: Charles Earle Funk

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Thereby Hangs a Tale - Stories of Curious Word Origins

By: Charles Earle Funk

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350

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Read Books Ltd

Published Date

ISBN 10

1447495853

ISBN 13

9781447495857

Puzzles and Essays from 'The Exchange'

Tricky Reference Questions

By: Charles R Anderson

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Puzzles and Essays from 'The Exchange'

Tricky Reference Questions

By: Charles R Anderson

Who said that? When did that happen? Where the heck does that thing come from? Was that French, or what? What's that supposed to mean? For 35 years, librarians in the United States and other countries sent puzzles they could not solve locally to “The Exchange,” a column for reference librarians appearing in RQ (and later, RUSQ), the official journal of the Reference and User Services Division of the ALA. Other readers often furnished the answers--sometimes years or even decades later! Puzzles and Essays from “The Exchange” organizes those perplexing questions and answers into a reader-friendly reference format, embellished with essays that appeared in the column over the last fifteen years of its publication. This unique collection of questions and answers that stumped librarians on four continents over a 35-year period comes complete with authoritative bibliographic citations. It also contains an extensive subject, person, and keyword index, providing easy access to the material. Packed with fascinating information, little-known trivia, and hard-to-find facts, Puzzles and Essays from “The Exchange” is a wonderful reference source, answering difficult questions about: the origins of common--and not-so-common-customs, like giving engagement rings, driving on the right or left side of the road, tying yellow ribbons around trees in memory of captives, leg shaving, visits from the “Tooth Fairy,” and much, much more! the origins of words, phrases, and terms that don’t, when taken literally, make much sense the origins of popular sayings--The grass is always greener; The whole nine yards; It ain't over until the fat lady sings; Close but no cigar; Going down the tube; Light at the end of the tunnel; Katy, bar the door; Goodbye, cruel world; etc. the sources of famous quotations--both spurious and real! the sources of poetry fragments and bits of verse that have become part of the popular lexicon hard-to-find biographical information-from George Washington Carver's many uses for the peanut and the sweet potato to the name of Paul Revere's horse to the truth about the “let them eat cake” story attributed to Marie Antoinette trivia and miscellany--how lullabies began; why a yawn is contagious when a sneeze is not; what the names of the monkeys in The Wizard of Oz were; why pigeons bob their heads when they walk; what the vital statistics of the Venus de Milo are; and much more! the history of “The Exchange” itself! Puzzles and Essays from “The Exchange” will also challenge you with a list of so-far unanswered questions, unidentified quotations, and popular sayings whose origins are still generally unknown. Perhaps you’ll be the one to answer the riddles that stumped the editors and readers of “The Exchange!”

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Page Count

236

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1317956125

ISBN 13

9781317956129

Panati's Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things

By: Charles Panati

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Panati's Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things

By: Charles Panati

Relates facts and information about a host of ordinary things ranging from safety pins to negligees.

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Page Count

480

Publisher

Chartwell Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

0785834370

ISBN 13

9780785834373

Many Things in Parables

Jesus and His Modern Critics

By: Charles W. Hedrick

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Many Things in Parables

Jesus and His Modern Critics

By: Charles W. Hedrick

In this splendid introduction to the elusive rhetorical device central to the New Testament picture of Jesus, Charles Hedrick explores the nature of the parable and its history of use. He asks basic questions such as, what is a parable? is Jesus really the author of the parables? and what does a parable mean? and then reviews a range of sources--from Aesop's fables to modern New Testament scholarship--to answer them. He also surveys the various ways the parables have been approached in literary criticism throughout history, giving specific examples of each method and delineating their strengths and weaknesses.

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Page Count

166

Publisher

Westminster John Knox Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

066422427X

ISBN 13

9780664224271

The Epistle to the Thessalonians

By: Charles A. Wanamaker

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The Epistle to the Thessalonians

By: Charles A. Wanamaker

Wanamaker's study on the Epistles to the Thessalonians is a contribution to The New International Greek Testament Commentary, a series based on the UBS Greek New Testament, and which strives to provide thorough exegesis of the text that is sensitive to theological themes as well as to the details of the historical, linguistic, and textual context.

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374

Publisher

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

0802823947

ISBN 13

9780802823946

The Little War of Private Post

The Spanish-American War Seen Up Close

By: Charles Johnson Post

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The Little War of Private Post

The Spanish-American War Seen Up Close

By: Charles Johnson Post

Charles Johnson Post (1873?1956) received not one but two handmade red flannel bellybands for protection against tropical fevers when he enlisted as a private in 1898 with the 71st New York Infantry. He was paid a monthly wage of $13.00, with an additional $1.30 combat pay per month. Setting off for what he later termed "the little wars that are the mere trivia of history," he came back to write "a mild chronicle of many little men who were painting on a big canvas, and of their little epic routines of life, with a common death at their elbow. It is only the little, but keen, tribulations that made the epic routine of an old-fashioned war.

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Page Count

382

Publisher

U of Nebraska Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0803287577

ISBN 13

9780803287570

The Little War Of Private Post: An Artist-Soldier’s Memoir Of The Spanish-American War

By: Charles Johnson Post

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The Little War Of Private Post: An Artist-Soldier’s Memoir Of The Spanish-American War

By: Charles Johnson Post

THE LITTLE WAR OF PRIVATE POST is a stirring, funny, brave, sympathetic piece of Americana—the memoir of a foot soldier in the Spanish-American War who happened also to be a first-rate artist, carrying a sketchbook along with his gun. It is a GI’s view of the invasion of Cuba in June 1898, from the moment that Charles Johnson Post passed the jumping test, the coughing test and the eyesight test and became a soldier to the day he returned to New York, gaunt and fever-ridden—the first man back from San Juan Hill. In April, Private Post was among the raw recruits assembled at Camp Black on Hempstead Plains, Long Island. He is eloquent about the soldier’s diet of coffee, hardtack, and sowbelly, “rancid and translucent in decay”; about the practice drills in close order formation, “much as in the days of Waterloo or Gettysburg”; about his fellow soldiers, their clothing, daily life, and esprit de corps. Post has such a good-humored, straight view of his own and others’ experiences that throughout the book all that is dismal, painful, malarial, hot, deathly and serious becomes touching, brave and ludicrous—though never losing dignity. The writer’s pen and the artist’s brush re-create for us the invasion of Cuba, one of the most brilliant campaigns of our entire military history—despite fantastic blunders before, during and after it. Rubber ponchos peeled; woolen uniforms were ridiculous in the Cuban heat; horses were so scarce that the Rough Riders had nothing to ride; and after Santiago had capitulated, General Shafter waited and waited while his troops died of disease, far removed from medical care. THE LITTLE WAR OF PRIVATE POST is the chronicle of individual men on a wide canvas. Many of them died, and death gives to the little routines of their lives an epic significance. This was an “old-fashioned” war, but in it we find much that is illuminating today—particularly so because it is on a small, personal scale.

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Page Count

375

Publisher

Pickle Partners Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

1786256630

ISBN 13

9781786256638

Living Genres in Late Modernity

American Music of the Long 1970s

By: Charles Kronengold

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Living Genres in Late Modernity

American Music of the Long 1970s

By: Charles Kronengold

Living Genres in Late Modernity rehears the American 1970s through the workings of its musical genres. Exploring stylistic developments from the late 1960s through the early 1980s, including soul, funk, disco, pop, the nocturne, and the concerto, Charles Kronengold treats genres as unstable constellations of works, people, practices, institutions, technologies, money, conventions, forms, ideas, and multisensory experiences. What these genres share is a significant cultural moment: they arrive just after “the sixties” and are haunted by a sense of belatedness, loss, or doubt, even as they embrace narratives of progress or abundance. These genres give us reasons—and means—to examine our culture’s self-understandings. Through close readings and large-scale mappings of cultural and stylistic patterns, the book’s five linked studies reveal how genres help construct personal and cultural identities that are both partial and overlapping, that exist in tension with one another, and that we experience in ebbs and flows.

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Page Count

354

Publisher

Univ of California Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0520388771

ISBN 13

9780520388772

An Introduction to the New Testament, Second Edition

By: Charles B. Puskas,C. Michael Robbins

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An Introduction to the New Testament, Second Edition

By: Charles B. Puskas,C. Michael Robbins

Studying the New Testament requires a determination to encounter this collection of writings on its own terms. This classic introduction by Charles B. Puskas, revised with C. Michael Robbins, provides helpful guidance. Since the publication of the first edition, which was in print for twenty years, a host of new and diverse cultural, historical, social-scientific, socio-rhetorical, narrative, textual, and contextual studies has been examined. Attentive also to the positive reviews of the first edition, the authors retain the original tripartite arrangement on 1) the world of the New Testament, 2) interpreting the New Testament, and 3) Jesus and early Christianity. This volume supplies readers with pertinent primary and secondary material. The new edition carries on a genuine effort to be nonsectarian, and although it is more of a critical introduction than a general survey, it is recommended to midlevel college and seminary students and to anyone who wants to be better informed about the New Testament.

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Page Count

395

Publisher

Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

1606087851

ISBN 13

9781606087855

The Letters of Paul

Interpreting Biblical Texts Series

By: Charles B. Cousar

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The Letters of Paul

Interpreting Biblical Texts Series

By: Charles B. Cousar

The Interpreting Biblical Texts series presents a concise edition covering the seven undisputed epistles of Paul. In this volume, Charles Cousar is primarily concerned not with the man Paul and his life and work, but with his surviving letters. Part 1 introduces methods in reading the Pauline letters. Part 2 attends to the critical themes emerging in the letters--the decisiveness of Jesus Christ and old versus new life. Part 3 discusses the other six letters bearing Paul's name that appear in the New Testament.

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Page Count

214

Publisher

Abingdon Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0687008522

ISBN 13

9780687008520

Heavens to Betsy!

& Other Curious Sayings

By: Charles E. Funk

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Heavens to Betsy!

& Other Curious Sayings

By: Charles E. Funk

He's as mad as a hatter! Whether it's like a bump on a log or a bat out of hell, these expressions have been around forever, but we've never really known why ... until now! Finally Dr. Funk explains more than 400 droll, colorful, and sometimes pungent expressions of everyday speech. Derived from classical sources, historic events, famous literature, frontier humor, and the frailties of humankind, each of these sayings has an interesting story behind its origin. If you've ever wondered why when you're in a hurry you are told to hold your horses, wonder no more!

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Age

Page Count

226

Publisher

Harper Collins

Published Date

ISBN 10

0060513314

ISBN 13

9780060513313

Book's by Charles Earle Funk

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