Having Fun with Words of Wit and Wisdom
In 3,401 Quotations from Writers Across the Ages From the Prophets in the Bible to Barack Obama Words You’re not Likely to Hear on the Crosstown Bus (Unless It’s the One Between Harvard and M.I.T)
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Reviews
“Tom McMorrow’s ‘Words of Wit and Wisdom’ is a great resource for teachers,
students and lovers of language. It connects people to their linguistic heritage
and promotes the project of continual cognitive enrichment . . . an entertaining
and infinitely useful support for any who want to deepen their understanding
of language.”
. – Dorothy D. Wills, Ph.D., Linguistic Anthropologist
Chair, Department. of Geography and Anthropology
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
“A compilation of ten-dollar words made memorable by Tom McMorrow’s flair
for describing their priceless back stories. Dictionary definitions pale when
compared to McMorrow’s peculiar brand of etymology. (Pompous, he writes, is
“a perfectly respectable word that has harrumphed itself into disrepute over the
centuries.” ) Brimming with references to literature, journalism and history,
‘Words of Wit and Wisdom’ delivers on it promise to entertain even as it
informs.”
– Jeff Carlton, The Associated Press, Dallas
“Tom McMorrow has created a monumental work honed from a lifetime of
literary interest.. With fascinating quotations selected to cleverly illustrate a
broad range of words, he has produced a memorable volume that is
illuminating, useful and entertaining. It stands solidly in the tradition of
language and appreciation of wit, and is a most welcome book that one will
want to keep handy for exploration and inspiration.”
– William Wolf, critic, author, NYU professor and president of
The Drama Desk, the association New York theater critics
“Tom McMorrow’s ‘Words of Wit and Wisdom’ will certainly be a good addition
to any library, and it will have an honored place in mine. The book is much like
Sam Johnson’s Dictionary, with quotations serving as illustrations. Dr.
Johnson’s work has some eccentric definitions and a little wit, but I like Tom
McMorrow’s explanations better.”
– Valdon Johnson, Professor Emeritus of English,
University of Northern Iowa
One of America’s most prestigious prep schools, Choate Rosemary Hall, alma
mater of Adlai Stevenson and John F. Kennedy, is using Having Fun with Words
of Wit and Wisdom as a textbook. I love the qoutations! They hlep the kids to
understand and remember the words.”
– Tom Yankus, Fourth Form English teacher
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Book Details
About the Book
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About the Author
Tom McMorrow
spent 23 years at the New York Daily News as a reporter, feature writer, copy
editor and theater critic, and is a past president of The Drama Desk, the association of New York theater critics,
writers and editors.
He has written short stories and articles for magazines ranging from the Saturday Evening Post to
Argosy, True, Fantasy & Science Fiction and a dozen others.
He started as a sportswriter on the Washington Daily News in 1941-42, then after three years in the
Army in World War II he worked in theater as an actor and summer stock producer before returning to
journalism as the sports editor of Paramount News from 1948-51 and Movietone News, where he directed 25
Twentieth Century-Fox short subjects, from 1952-63.
After Movietone went out of business in 1963 he worked briefly as an independent documentary
producer before joining the Daily News in 1964.
He retired from the News in December 1987 and since then, at
first intermittently but in recent years full time, he has been compiling and writing this collection, which had its
origin decades ago as a late-night vocabulary-improver, reading the dictionary.
The quotations whose
acquisition was originally incidental to this eventually became his prime focus, with the one proviso: that they
not be “Familiar,” but drawn from the authors’ use of the sort of words defined in the book’s subtitle.
Illustrator Sam Norkin
In the late 1970s and ’80s, Tom and Sam would team up every summer and tour
summer stock companies and regional theaters to see plays that were prepping for Broadway, for a major
September Sunday feature on prospects for the coming season.
Illustrator Sam Norkin - Sam, who had been the theater artist for the Herald Tribune, joined the Daily News when the Tribune
folded and has also contributed his delightful gift for caricature to major newspaper syndicates and magazines,
won numerous prizes and has had a one-man show of his art at Lincoln Center.
His art illustrating the plays of
August Wilson was shown in a tribute to the late playwright at The Kennedy Center in Washington in the spring
of 2008.