Word Play: A cornucopia of puns, anagrams and other contortions and curiosities of the English language

By: Gyles Brandreth

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Synopsis: The aim of the book is entertainment - and surprise - but there will be a fair bit of erudition and incidental education along the way. (Why is it a troop of baboons, but a shrewdness of apes?). We discover the oldest words, the newest, the longest, the shortest, the most frequently used, the costliest (yes, words can come with a price attached), the funniest, the most fatal, the most unusual...from the words Shakespeare gave us to the latest in sexting, the BEST and the WORST, the most AMUSING and AMAZING words are here Full of puns, palindromes, pangrams, acrostics, malaprops, famous (and infamous) last words and everything in between, in Word Play, Gyles Brandreth leads us through an A-Z and a Z-A of the wonderful world of words. This is a dazzling words book that is the ultimate compendium of word wisdom, facts and fun.