The Metaphor Zoo : Why the English Language Loves Animals - Jeremy Butterfield

The Metaphor Zoo : Why the English Language Loves Animals - Jeremy Butterfield

Jeremy Butterfield

£18.99
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Published 5 November 2026

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  • Pages · 384 pages
  • Publication Date · 05/11/2026
  • Genre · Language: history & general works
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Ever wondered why it rains cats and dogs? Why some are early birds and others night owls? Or why on earth a cat would�wear pyjamas?'Charming, scholarly, boisterously playful, thoroughly engaging.' Benjamin Dreyer, bestselling author of�Dreyer's EnglishEnglish is home to a veritable menagerie of animal metaphors, similes, sayings, adages, proverbs, idioms and rhymes, ranging from the commonsense to the utterly absurd. From curious cats to mindless sheeple, lexicographer Jeremy Butterfield takes a species-by-species safari through the English language in pursuit of its most unusual animal idioms. Learn how coots - perfectly nice little birds - become synonymous with madness, baldness and idiocy. Figure out if bees actually have knees, and if so, why they're so great. And discover why pigs `oink' in English, `khankhanah' in Arabic, `heng heng' in Mandarin - but cats always mew. Filled to the brim with fascinating facts and trivia, The Metaphor Zoo is the perfect gift for language lovers, amateur linguists and grammar nerds alike. ***'You'll savour every fauna-fuelled page... enchanting.'�Vanessa Feltz 'Joyous, fascinating and utterly delightful.' Stephen Moss, author of The Accidental Countryside'The English language is crawling, hopping, slithering and soaring with animal words.�The Metaphor Zoo�lets them all run wild, to glorious effect.' Sally Coulthard, author of�A Short History of the World According to Sheep�

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