In the final chapter, Adams digs into the role slang plays in the way our brains process information. He cites, for example, an academic study in which the subjects' brain activity was measured while they read Shakespeare's "Coriolanus": It would jump whenever they encountered one of the Bard's trickier and more playful uses of the language -- for instance, when he'd recruit a word typically used as a noun for use as a verb, as in "He godded me." Adams writes, "It wasn't as if the brains were confused, exactly, but rather as if they had been awakened from linguistic boredom."

¶ 9:42 AM