Meaning of Liff

by Douglas Adams

Book Overview

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0330281216
• ISBN13: 9780330281218
• Release Date: January 1983
• Publisher: MacMillan General Books
• Length: 191 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Now my liff has a real meaning!!!

(Attention, if not warning: this comment contains two or so profanities. When confronted with them, just block your eyes then, eh??! OK, great!!:)I've tried 'em all, Webster's, Oxford's, Cambridge's, but none of those dictionaries ever really made sense to me. I mean, I could not possibly care less how many people live in a town named Aalst (nothing personal, Aalst, but that's where I always gave up)??! It wasn't until I found a small, black, paperback with some graved letters on the cover, that I was able to enjoy anything else more than the phonebook!!! I didn't, for example, know that I ski with Zeal Monachorum before I read THE MEANING OF LIFF. Nor did I know that Aird of Sleat was placed upon Heathrow Airport!! Thanks for warning me, Doug and John!! Also, this little black book can help all of us, when, for example, confronted with a glossop, or what we did, when someone says we've just commited a wigan. Now I can play golf AND enjoy it as well!!! Instead of the frustrating how-many-bogies-have-I-got count, I just count Whaplode droves. Then this once-useless game finally has an amusing purpose.No, really. This book, alongside being pantwettingly funny, is, in my opinion, an honest and respectable attempt to save the English language from a violent and tragic destruction. For English, as it exists today, is becoming a language of three words: .... This book, and indeed the Deeper Meaning Of Liff as well, is a guide to help us all to save this beautiful language (as all languages are). At least my Liff has a Deeper Meaning now.

Possibly the best Joke Book ever

Although a number of your friends may think you a bit weird if you tried to retell them. This rates as one of the few books that makes me laugh out loud (very loudly). A collection of explanations of strange & bizarre place names from around the world, Mr Adams and Mr Lloyd truly show off their incredibly imaginations and pure wit. While the reader may need a "Monty Pythonish" (or even a Hitch-Hikers Guide!) sense of humour, this is a genuinely very funny book

The meaning of Liff, explained.

If you like words, you'll love this book. It's crammed with absolute gems that will have you laughing out loud from page to page. Adams and Lloyd take previously useless place-names and assign them appropriate meanings, taking care of all the things in life (liff) that lack their own defining words, with hilarious results. You'll love this book!

Very clever!

This is a brilliant little book. It contains words for all those annoying things that there ought to be words for but aren't. For example: 'the precise distance between your outstretched fingers and the ticket sticking out of the machine at the gate entrance to a parking lot'. If you want something to make you giggle, this is the book!