num_pages: 176
description: An entertaining and thought-provoking book for language buffs and anyone interested in quotations, What They Didn't Say sifts through more than one hundred and fifty misquotations, incorrect attributions, and apocryphal remarks to reveal the origins of the quotes. Organized in an accessibleA-Z format, quotes range from "Actors are cattle" (Alfred Hitchcock) to "You dirty rat!" (James Cagney) and span from the classical world right up to the present day.Bringing together a fascinating range of wrongly remembered sayings, What They Didn't Say aims to set the record straight by revealing the real names and actual words behind the famous missayings.Sample entry:A good day to bury bad news.In the hours following news of the terrorist action in America on 11 September 2001 ("nine-eleven"), the British government adviser Jo Moore sent out an email reading, "It is now a very good day to get out anything we want to bury." This was leaked and widely reported; public shock and distastewere heightened by its becoming fixed in the general consciousness in the form, "a good day to bury bad news."
language: English
title: What They Didn't Say: A Book of Misquotations
titlecomplete: What They Didn't Say: A Book of Misquotations
genres: Language, Nonfiction
ratings_count: 9
publisher: Oxford University Press