Provides words to enhance the readers' vocabulary with definitions and quotes from historic and contemporary people, including Leonardo da Vinci, Dave Eggers, and Rowan Atkinson.

In day-to-day speech, we use words and phrases without a passing thought as to why we use them or where they come from. Max Cryer changes all that by showing how fascinating the English language really is. Did you know that the former host of Today, Jane Pauley, claims to have coined the term "bad hair day," or that a CBS engineer named Charley Douglass invented the name and use of "canned laughter" for television, or that "cold turkey" as a term...

A little girl pictures the things her parents talk about, such as a chocolate moose, a gorilla war, and shoe trees.

If a great metaphor, like a picture, is worth a thousand words, then this expansive collection will save 6.5 million as it presents 6,500 comparative phrases from ancient times to the present.

Rhyming text and illustrations introduce a variety of collective nouns such as a "drift of swans" and a "clutch of eggs."