Watching My Language:: Adventures in the Word Trade

"The ninth volume of tidbits of stylistic wit and wisdom from a man willing to display his grammar in public. . . . Yet again, readers will find that William Safire's apparently endless capacity to be fascinated by language is highly contagious. "
--Kirkus Reviews

America's most entertaining language maven is back with more words to live by in his latest exploration of hot catchphrases, syntactical controversies, and other matters of national linguistic importance.

Before you scratch that seven-year-itch, you might want to know where it came from. And before someone blurts, "You just don't get it,"??perhaps you should consult the Pulitzer Prize winning language columnist on the origins of that snappy feminist motto.

In Watching My Language, William Safire investigates these questions and many others, including:

What language was Bill Clinton speaking when he fumed, "I want to put a fist halfway down their throats with this. . . . I want their teeth on the sidewalk ?"
Why is Ukraine no longer the Ukraine? Should there be an insurrection against this usage?
Did baseball manager Leo Durocher really say, "Nice guys finish last" ?
Who deserves credit for coining the expressions policy wonk, digerati, and Not!?


William Safire, a man hip enough to explore the meaning of hip-hop, answers these questions and many more in this witty and enlightening collection.

Praise for William Safire
"Safire infuses his verbiage with humor, timely examples, and quotes, resulting in mini-essays that are informative and intriguing. "??
--Nashville Banner

"Wonderful. . . . Where once stood your seventh-grade English teacher guarding the narrow gates of good usage and correct grammar now stands William Safire. . . . His true calling is chasing down first-time uses of a trendy phrase, spotting literary allusions, and most of all, keeping the American language on the straight and narrow. . . . Your old English teacher would approve."????
--The Dallas Morning News

This is the latest in the long line of collections of William Safire's New York Times "On Language" columns. Like its predecessors, it mostly focuses on language issues that arise from the politics of the day. Sometimes the political origins are a bit hazy now (Who remembers what got Bill Clinton so mad about George Bush's criticism of his "People First" economic program? Who even remembers the program?), but usually the resulting linguistic forays remain interesting (Clinton expressed his anger with the phrase, "I want their teeth on the sidewalk," and Safire turns up Shakespearean and classical antecedents). Safire is at his best when he is toiling in the Orwellian project of policing political euphemism--this is where his conservative political bent most successfully converges with his language maven status. For instance, his column--and readers' responses to it--about whether the Maryland state motto, Fattii maschii, parole femine (masculine deeds, feminine speech) is inherently sexist is a nuanced demonstration that politically correct language misses a lot.