A Word in Your Shell-like: 6,000 Curious & Everyday Phrases Explained

A Word in Your Shell-like: 6,000 Curious & Everyday Phrases Explained

by Nigel Rees

Collins, $144

'May you live in interesting times' is a phrase Nigel Rees asserts is 'an ancient Chinese curse and popular in the UK from the early 1980s'. Huh? The alert reader may end up at the marvellous open-source Wikipedia, which thinks nothing of the sort. It has so far tracked the phrase back to the 1950s and attributes its popularisation to Robert F. Kennedy's Affirmation Address to the University of South Africa in 1966: 'There is a Chinese curse which says, 'May he live in interesting times'. Like it or not, we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty; but they are also the most creative of any time in the history of mankind.' Rees, quizmaster for a BBC Radio 4 show called Quote ... Unquote, has gathered a hefty 768 pages of phrases, some common, others not so. However, the perspective seems rather English on the language and etymology, and limited to when electronic archiving began, or what has been covered before. Alas, this is not a book with which to settle arguments, but A Word in Your Shell-like is addictive reading, nonetheless.