Content
The book is a "dictionary of things that there aren't any words for yet". Rather than inventing new words, Adams and Lloyd picked a number of existing place-names, and assigned interesting meanings to them; meanings which can be regarded as on the verge of social existence, and are ready to become recognizable entities.
All the words listed are toponyms, and describe common feelings and objects for which there is no current English word. Examples are Shoeburyness ("The vague uncomfortable feeling you get when sitting on a seat which is still warm from somebody else's bottom") and Plymouth ("To relate an amusing story to someone without remembering that it was they who told it to you in the first place").
The book cover usually bears the tagline "This book will change your life", either as part of its cover or as an adhesive label. Liff (a village near Dundee in Scotland) is then defined in the book as "A book, the contents of which are totally belied by its cover. For instance, any book the dust jacket of which bears the words, 'This book will change your life'."
Read more about this topic: The Meaning Of Liff
Famous quotes containing the word content:
“Sir Charles: Aren’t you drinking?
Princess Dala: I don’t drink.
Sir Charles: Never?
Princess Dala: I’m quite content with reality, I have no need for escape.
Sir Charles: Well, I enjoy reality as much as the next man, it’s just in my case, fortunately, reality includes a good stiff belt every now and then.”
—Blake Edwards (b. 1922)
“Any so-called material thing that you want is merely a symbol: you want it not for itself, but because it will content your spirit for the moment.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“The President has paid dear for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his peace, and the best of his manly attributes. To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is content to eat dust before the real masters who stand erect behind the throne.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)