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If you love books, you've come to the right place. Here's where you'll find great books and more that our tomato reviewers have read and think other tomatoes will love too. Happy reading.
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The Three Tomatoes Book Shelf
Recent Reviews
Editor’s Note: Our book reviews can not be bought. We only review books that we and other tomatoes have read and think you’ll enjoy. And while this section may occasionally be sponsored by a publisher or author, it does not guarantee that the book will be reviewed here, unless it stands on its own merits.
A Certain “Je Ne Sais Quoi”
The Origin of Foreign Words Used in English
by Chloe Rhodes
Reviewed by: Mr. Tomato
English is filled with a smorgasbord of foreign words and phrases that have crept into our language from many sources……some as far back as the Celts. A Certain “Je Ne Sais Quoi”
tells the story of how many of these expressions came to be commonly used in English
.
For instance:
- Ketchup began life as a spicy pickled fish sauce called koechiap in seventeenth century China.
- Paparazzi which means mosquitoes in Italian and is now used across the world for those pesky freelance photographers who pursue celebrities to take candid shots of them, didn’t acquire this meaning until the 1966 release of Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. He named the pesky photographer character Signore Paparazzo after a school friend whose buzzing energy had earned him the nickname “The Mosquito”.
- Dungaree comes from the Hindi word dungri, the thick cotton cloth used for sails and tents in India.
Language lovers will enjoy this book as it tells the little-known origin of some of these thousands of foreign words and phrases. Organized alphabetically for easy reference …from a cappella to zeitgeist… you’ll find translations, definitions, origins and lively descriptions of each items evolution into everyday usage.
A book for language lovers.
Mr. Tomato loves books and language. And Mrs. Tomato too.
