A merger has taken place between Peter Novobatzky and Ammon Shea's books Depraved English
and Insulting English
. The result? Depraved and Insulting English
. "Some of the entries are lascivious," the authors say, "some revolting, and others derogatory. A few are all of these things." This book will provide blissful browsing for anyone who ever got a fourth-grade thrill from looking up naughty words in the dictionary or, later, felt a frisson of pleasure from using obscure but racy words that few others understood. Many of the terms here--such as coprolagnia, cypripareunia, hybristophiliac, peotillomian, and sacofricosis--sound downright illicit. More intriguing are the words that sound perfectly acceptable, like blissom, feist, and plooky. But watch out for the plooky fellow who lets out a feist when he blissoms; he's actually a pimply guy who farts silently while copulating with ewes. Eeew. --Jane Steinberg
From Publishers Weekly
Peter Novobatzky and Ammon Shea, the gleefully naughty authors of Depraved English and Insulting English, combine their two guides to the puerile side of our popular tongue into one salty volume, efficiently titled Depraved and Insulting English. Sure, the words mome, limberham, encopresis are good, but what's better are the authors' usage examples, which demonstrate a mischievous exuberance. Explaining a particularly intense form of voyeurism, the authors write: "Being struck suddenly blind would have taxed any man, but for Mr. Bigelow, with his acute scopophilia, it smacked of divine vengeance."
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