{"product_id":"9781836432432","title":"The Metaphor Zoo : Why the English Language Loves Animals - Jeremy Butterfield","description":"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�","brand":"Jeremy Butterfield","offers":[{"title":"384 pages \/ 05\/11\/2026 \/ Language: history \u0026 general works","offer_id":57557010743671,"sku":"9781836432432","price":18.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0682\/9454\/1624\/files\/9781836432432.jpg?v=1791969422","url":"https:\/\/gulpfictionbooks.com\/products\/9781836432432","provider":"Gulp Fiction","version":"1.0","type":"link"}