The Meaning of Liff - Softcover

Douglas Adams

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330281216 ISBN 13: 9780330281218

Publisher: Pan Macmillan, 1983

Synopsis

In life and, indeed, in liff, there are many hundreds of common experiences, feelings, situations and even objects which we all know and recognize, but for which no words exist. This text uses place names to describe some of these meanings.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

Does the sensation of Tingrith(1) make you yelp? Do you bend sympathetically when you see someone Ahenny(2)? Can you deal with a Naugatuck(3) without causing a Toronto(4)? Will you suffer from Kettering(5) this summer?
Probably. You are almost certainly familiar with all these experiences but just didn't know that there are words for them. Well, in fact, there aren't--or rather there weren't, until Douglas Adams and John Lloyd decided to plug these egregious linguistic lacunae(6). They quickly realized that just as there are an awful lot of experiences that no one has a name for, so there are an awful lot of names for places you will never need to go to. What a waste. As responsible citizens of a small and crowded world, we must all learn the virtues of recycling(7) and put old, worn-out but still serviceable names to exciting, vibrant, new uses. This is the book that does that for you: "The Deeper Meaning of Liff--a whole new solution to the problem of Great Wakering(8)

1--The feeling of aluminum foil against your fillings.
2--The way people stand when examining other people's bookshelves.
3--A plastic packet containing shampoo, mustard, etc., which is impossible to open except by biting off
the corners.
4--Generic term for anything that comes out in a gush, despite all your efforts to let it out carefully, e.g., flour into a white sauce, ketchup onto fish, a dog into the yard, and another naughty meaning that we can't put on the cover.
5--The marks left on your bottom and thighs after you've been sitting sunbathing in a wicker chair.
6--God knows what this means
7--For instance, some of this book was first published in Britain twenty-six years ago.
8--Look it up yourself.

About the Author

Douglas Adams created all the various and contradictory manifestations of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy: radio, novels, TV, computer game, stage adaptations, comic book and bath towel. He lectured and broadcast around the world and was a patron of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund and Save the Rhino International. Douglas Adams was born in Cambridge, UK and lived with his wife and daughter in Islington, London, before moving to Santa Barbara, California, where he died suddenly in 2001. After Douglas died the movie of Hitchhiker moved out of development hell into the clear uplands of production, using much of Douglas' original script and ideas. Douglas shares the writing credit for the movie with Karey Kirkpatrick.

Edition details

• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Publication date: 1983
• ISBN 10: 0330281216
• ISBN 13: 9780330281218
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 191