Chapter 10. STOP WHALING

 

"My dear friend, clear your mind of can't."

 
 --SAMUEL JOHNSON, ESSAYIST AND THE COMPILER OF THE FIRST DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (1709–1784)

I recently read an article that explained that William Shakespeare had used 17,676 different words in his plays. He was responsible for inventing over 1,700 new words, such as critic, laughable, swagger, envy, elbow room and moonbeam. If you think this book contains the "naked truth", you're using a phrase he created. On the other hand, if you think "it's all Greek to me", well, that's another of Shakespeare's creations.

To show that anyone can invent a word or phrase, football manager Sir Alex Ferguson coined "squeaky bum time" for the pressure that players and managers feel ...

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