Your boss makes a joke about Schrodinger’s cat - something you’ve heard of, but what exactly happened (or didn’t happen) with that cat? Or you’re reading a New Yorker article that explains that ‘Solecism slipped into solipsism into full-blown narcissistic projection.’ An excellent point … if you know what ‘solecism’ means … or, for that matter, ‘solipsism’.

Language gurus Ross Petras and Kathryn Petras explain all of the words and phrases smart people should know. Covering the worlds of science, the arts and philosophy, they explore broad topics, like quantum physics and ontology, and more specific ones, like shibboleth and bete noire. From Latin phrases we often hear and read (prima facie, sui generis and the like) to those pesky words that have entered our vocabularies from other languages (bildungsroman, sturm und drang), this book will inform and delight even the most pernickety word nerds.