Editions

Horrible Words

  • Imprint: Penguin

  • ISBN: 9780141978970

  • Length: 224  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 13mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 170g

  • RRP: £8.99

Horrible Words

  • A Guide to the Misuse of English

'Stuffed with entertaining detail ... Horrible Words is lively, provocative, witty and enlightening' The Times

Nothing inflames the language purists like an illogical irregardless or a hideous otherization. But is it enough simply to dismiss these words as vile and barbarous howlers? Taking a genial tour far and wide through our linguistic badlands, Rebecca Gowers finds answers that are helpful, surprising and often extremely funny.

'Exuberant, erudite, informative and fun ... a call on all English-speakers to trust their own feel for their language, to relish their verbal inventiveness and to do battle against the pedants who tell them they are wrong' Michael Skapinker, Financial Times

'A very useful book, packed with good historical sense' Lynne Truss, The Times

  • Imprint: Penguin

  • ISBN: 9780141978970

  • Length: 224  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 13mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 170g

  • RRP: £8.99

Reviews

  • A great delight

    David Crystal

  • Gowers is fierce, funny and staggeringly well informed

    Alan Connor, Mail on Sunday

  • Stuffed with entertaining detail ... Horrible Words is lively, provocative, witty and enlightening

    The Times

  • Exuberant and stimulating ... erudite, informative and fun

    Financial Times

  • Witty ... wry ... As a heretic, Gowers cuts a formidable figure

    The Times Literary Supplement

  • A very useful book, packed with good historical sense

    Lynne Truss, The Times

  • A joy - informative and irreverent

    Caroline Taggart

  • Witty and erudite ... A splendid antidote to small-minded pedantry

    Robbie Millen, The Times

  • Will have you enraptured by etymology ... Hugely enjoyable

    Reader's Digest

More from this Author

About the Author

Rebecca Gowers

Rebecca Gowers is the author of The Swamp of Death, shortlisted for the CWA non-fiction Golden Dagger Award, and of two novels, When to Walk and The Twisted Heart, both longlisted for the Orange Prize. She is also the most recent editor of Plain Words, the classic guide to the use of English by her great-grandfather Sir Ernest Gowers.

Rebecca Gowers

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