That Doesn't Mean What You Think It Means ― The 150 Most Commonly Misused Words and Their Tangled Histories

An entertaining and informative guide to the most common 150 words even smart people use incorrectly, along with pithy forays into their fascinating etymologies and tangled histories of use and misuse.

With the rise of grammar police and usage snobs, this book saves you from sticky linguistic situations--and provides fascinating cocktail-party anecdotes. As evinced by grammar-shaming examples from real offenders who should know better (New York Times, we're looking at you), even educated people can sometimes be befuddled by usage questions. Each entry also includes short histories of how and why these mistake have happened, some of the (often surprisingly nasty) debates about which uses are (and are not) mistakes, and finally, how to use these words correctly. By the end of this book, every literati will be able to confidently use a priori, facetious, factoid, meteorite, unique, and the other top words that are used incorrectly every day.

KATHRYN PETRAS and ROSS PETRAS are the authors of the #1 best-selling page-a-day calendar The 365 Stupidest Things Ever Said (now in its 21st year with over 4.5 million copies sold), You're Saying It Wrong, and many other best-selling humor and gift books. Their work has received the attention of personalities like David Brinkley and Howard Stern, and media outlets including the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Cosmopolitan, Washington Post, Huffington Post, and the London Times. They have appeared on hundreds of radio and TV shows including Good Morning America (about menopause), CNN (about bad poetry), and Fox and Friends (about Paris Hilton).