Dry Rivers and Standing Rocks: A Word Finder for the American West - Couverture souple

Thybony, Scott

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0826322611 ISBN 13 : 9780826322616

Editeur : University of New Mexico Press, 2000

Synopsis

All writers get stuck looking for the right word. Noticing that this was an acute problem for writers in the West because standard thesauruses face east, Scott Thybony started a file of western words. Sorting through spoken and written texts, he looked, as he puts it, for 'grounded talk', 'place-linked words, both rooted and wind-blown'. He ended up with a list of western place names, cowboyisms, American Indian words on permanent loan, Spanish terms, a sprinkling of Arabic, some scientific terms, and an assortment of random coinings, borrowings, and outright expropriations. Soon this evolved from a computer file to the book he calls Dry Rivers and Standing Rocks and describes as 'something resembling a thesaurus of western geography'. This book is full of information but it's not really a reference book. It reads like poetry. But you don't need to be a writer to appreciate it. Readers, teachers, hikers, cartographers, even crossword puzzlers will love this book. Neither scholarly nor comprehensive, it's a collection to make you think. It contains paired words like standing rock, grafts like snaggletooth, loners like hoodoo.

A propos du livre

À propos de l?auteur

Scott Thybony

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: University of New Mexico Press
• Date d'édition: 2000
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0826322611
• ISBN 13: 9780826322616
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 104
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible