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.