Deeper meaning9/4/2023 ![]() ![]() In fact, in the beginning of the Monty Python film, the gravestone with the title "The Meaning of Liff" appears before a lightning bolt strikes the last F and converts it to an E.Ī revised and expanded edition of the original book, with about twice as many definitions, was published in 1990 as The Deeper Meaning of Liff (UK Edition: ISBN 6-0, US Edition: ISBN 7-9), though the original remains in print. Adams's idea was that the potential confusion with the film's script would help to sell more copies of the book. The title of the book was chosen to be very similar to Monty Python's film The Meaning of Life that was being produced at the same time, after Douglas Adams called Terry Jones to ask if it would be OK. It was a commercial success for Pan Books. The book was released in the UK in November 1983 in time for the Christmas market. Fellow humourist Miles Kington defended Adams and Lloyd in his column in The Times, noting a difference in style. Adams speculated that the teacher who originated the school game may have done so after reading the article. Įssentially the same idea was used by the English humourist Paul Jennings in an article Ware, Wye, Watford, published in the late 1950s. The bulk of the text was written by Adams and Lloyd in Summer 1982 in Malibu, California. The suggestion of turning this into a complete book in itself came from Faber MD Matthew Evans. This idea was used as part of the Not the Nine O'Clock News spin-off book Not 1982 ( ISBN 3-4), where they were headed "Today's new word from the Oxtail English Dictionary". For instance, any book the dust jacket of which bears the words, 'This book will change your life'."Īccording to Adams's account, the idea behind The Meaning of Liff grew out of an old school game and started when he and Lloyd were on holiday together in Corfu in 1978 during the writing of the first Hitchhiker's novel. Liff (a village near Dundee in Scotland) is then defined in the book as "A book, the contents of which are totally belied by its cover. The book cover usually bears the tagline "This book will change your life", either as part of its cover or as an adhesive label. Examples are Shoeburyness ("The vague uncomfortable feeling you get when sitting on a seat that is still warm from somebody else's bottom") and Plymouth ("To relate an amusing story to someone without remembering that it was they who told it to you in the first place"). Īll the words listed are toponyms and describe common feelings and objects for which there is no current English word. Rather than inventing new words, Adams and Lloyd picked a number of existing place-names and assigned interesting meanings to them, meanings that can be regarded as on the verge of social existence and ready to become recognisable entities. The book is a "dictionary of things that there aren't any words for yet". ![]() ![]() For example, it has been suggested that Shakespeare's play Much Ado About Nothing used this ploy to present a surface level description of the play as well as a pun on the Elizabethan use of "nothing" as slang for vagina.The Meaning of Liff (UK Edition: ISBN 1-6, US Edition: ISBN 7-3) is a humorous dictionary of toponymy and etymology, written by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd, published in the United Kingdom in 1983 and the United States in 1984. Perhaps because it is not offensive to those who do not recognize it, innuendo is often used in sitcoms and other comedy considered suitable for children, who may enjoy the comedy while being oblivious to its second meanings. another word which sounds the same) can be used as a pun.Ī person who is unfamiliar with the hidden or alternative meaning of a sentence may fail to detect its innuendos, aside from observing that others find it humorous for no apparent reason. They often exploit ambiguity and may be used to introduce it deliberately in a text. Double entendres generally rely on multiple meanings of words, or different interpretations of the same primary meaning. (The Oxford English Dictionary describes a double entendre as being used to "convey an indelicate meaning", whilst Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English defines it as " a word or phrase that may be understood in two different ways, one of which is often sexual")Ī double entendre may exploit puns to convey the second meaning. The innuendo may convey a message that would be socially awkward, sexually suggestive or offensive to state directly. Typically one of the meanings is obvious, given the context whereas the other may require more thought. A double entendre is a figure of speech or a particular way of wording that is devised to be understood in either of two ways, having a double meaning. ![]()
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