NEW YORK, Jan. 26, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Between politics and the pandemic, Zoom and doomscrolling, the past year has been a hard time for families and friends to engage—without shouting or spreading germs. And while expanding vaccination efforts offer real cause for hope, we are still looking at months of limited mobility in the best-case scenario. Authors Shirley and Harold Kobliner have an antidote to the social isolation—a way to come together using nothing high-tech or expensive—nothing, in fact, except the words found in their new book.
So to Speak: 11,000 Expressions That'll Knock Your Socks Off, just published by Simon & Schuster/Tiller Press, is a saving grace for this challenging time, offering families and friends of all ages a fun way to engage and connect—across the country and across generations.
Thirteen years in the making, So to Speak was a labor of love for these two lifelong educators and language obsessives. The Kobliners began collecting figures of speech when they were in their 70s—decades into a long, happy marriage—and with only two rules: no googling and no looking at existing collections. Instead, they jotted down what they heard and read in their everyday lives: from friends, family, or the guy at the grocery store, on TV, in the paper, or on the radio. In the end, they filled 26 legal pads with more than 11,000 expressions, idioms, and figures of speech—creating the largest collection of its kind.
But they didn't stop there. The Kobliners painstakingly organized their massive list into 67 offbeat categories—from "Love & Kisses" to "Birds, Bats & Insects" to "Sleep & Dreams." Add in 351 vintage illustrations from the British Library's public archives, and the result is a colorful look into the surprising and sometimes hilarious corners of our language.
To help share this with other lovers of wordplay, Harold and Shirley developed more than two dozen games, perfect for bridging our divides and overcoming distances using a shared love of everyday speech. Take the game called "Tomato, To-mah-to, Potato, Po-tah-to." The rules are simple: Two teams, each including older and younger members, compete to come up with pairs of expressions, one old-school and the other contemporary. Grandpa might call Grandma sweetie pie, while the grandkids call their significant other BAE. Let the intergenerational exchange begin! Even better, the games work whether you are face to face or playing remotely.
So to Speak resonates across generations and cultures because expressions aren't just words; they reveal who we are, where we're from, and when we were born. Sharing them with others is like sharing a piece of ourselves. Plus, research shows that word games improve our mental health and strengthen our relationships when we play them.
It's no surprise that word lovers and language experts have been eating it up. Emily Brewster of Merriam-Webster called it "an embarrassment of riches"; best-selling author Richard Lederer called it "an astonishing collection." And readers can't get enough. So to Speak quickly reached the No. 1 spot on four Amazon new release bestseller lists.
For the rest of the games—and a whole lot of expressions—you can order So to Speak right here or through your local bookseller. Plus, watch an animated "making of" video and play some of the original word games at SoToSpeakBook.com. As we hunker down for (hopefully!) the final months, give yourself and your loved ones the gift of connection. Give them So to Speak—and let the figures of speech fly!
For interviews and more information, contact: info@sotospeakbook.com
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SOURCE So to Speak: 11,000 Expressions That'll Knock Your Socks Off
