Spinglish: The Definitive Dictionary of Deliberately Deceptive Language

Henry Beard · Christopher Cerf

Jun. 2015 · Verkoop deur Penguin

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Spinglish—the devious dialect of English used by professional spin doctors—is all around us. And the fact is, until you’ve mastered it, politicians and corporations (not to mention your colleagues and friends) will continue putting things over on you, and generally getting the better of you, every minute of every day—without your even knowing it.
            However, once you perfect the art of terminological inexactitude, you’ll be the one manipulating and one-upping everyone else! And here’s the beauty part: Henry Beard and Christopher Cerf, authors of the New York Times semi-bestseller The Official Politically Correct Dictionary and Handbook, have compiled this handy yet astonishingly comprehensive lexicon and translation guide—a fictionary, if you will—to help you do just that. If you want to succeed in business (or politics, sports, the arts, or life in general) without really lying, this is the book for you! (Your results may vary.)
            Spinglish includes these nifty bits of spurious verbiage and over a thousand more:
 
aesthetic procedure – face-lift
dairy nutrients – cow manure
enhanced interrogation techniques – torture
 “For your convenience.” – “For our convenience.”
hands-on mentoring – sexual relations with a junior employee
incomplete success – failure
rightsizing – firing people
zero-tasking – doing nothing
 
            With each and every entry sourced from some of the greatest real-life language benders in the world today, you’re virtually guaranteed to have the perfectly chosen tried-and-untrue term right at the tip of your forked tongue. Wish you could nimbly sidestep a question without batting an eye? Not sure how to apologize while also . . . not apologizing? Spinglish has you covered. Simply consult this convenient, shoot-from-the-lip glossary, and before you know it, you’ll be telling it like it isn’t, it wasn’t, and it couldn’t ever have been.

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Henry Beard attended Harvard University and was a member of the Harvard Lampoon. He went on to found the National Lampoon with Douglas Kenney and served as its editor during the magazine’s heyday in the 1970s. He has written numerous bestselling humor books.
 
Christopher Cerf is an American author, composer-lyricist, voice actor, and record and television producer. He was a founding contributor to National Lampoon and is known for his musical contributions to Sesame Street, for co-creating and co-producing the award-winning PBS literacy education television program Between the Lions, and for his humorous articles and books.