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