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I Love It When You Talk Retro
Ralph Keyes
Hoochie Coochie, Double Whammy, Drop a Dime, and the Forgotten Origins of American Speech
St. Martin's Press
March 2009
On Sale: March 31, 2009
320 pages ISBN: 0312340052 EAN: 9780312340056 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
Today’s 18-year-olds may not know who Mrs. Robinson is,
where the term “stuck in a groove” comes from, why 1984 was
a year unlike any other, how big a bread box is, how to get
to Peyton Place, or what the term Watergate refers to. I
Love It When You Talk Retro discusses these verbal fossils
that remain embedded in our national conversation long
after the topic they refer to has galloped off into the
sunset. That could be a person (Mrs. Robinson), product
(Edsel), past bestseller (Catch-22), radio or TV show
(Gangbusters), comic strip (Alphonse and Gaston), or
advertisement (Where’s the beef?) long forgotten. Such
retroterms are words or phrases in current use whose
origins lie in our past. Ralph Keyes takes us on an
illuminating and engaging tour through the phenomenon that
is Retrotalk—a journey, oftentimes along the timelines of
American history and the faultlines of culture, that will
add to the word-lover’s store of trivia and obscure
references.
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