Examples are Shoeburyness ("The vague uncomfortable feeling you get when sitting on a seat that 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").

According to Adams's account, the idea behind The Meaning of Liff grew out of an old school game and started when he and Lloyd were on holiday together in Corfu in 1978 during the writing of the first Hitchhiker's novel.

[1][5] This idea was used as part of the Not the Nine O'Clock News spin-off book Not 1982 (ISBN 0-571-11853-4), where they were headed "Today's new word from the Oxtail English Dictionary".

Another edition in the series, Afterliff, has been released, with more entries contributed by Lloyd, Jon Canter and Douglas Adams's daughter Polly.

[10] A German adaptation was made by Sven Böttcher under the title Der tiefere Sinn des Labenz, published in 1992 (ISBN 3-453-87960-0).

[11] It is not a translation; instead it is stated as an "Idea stolen from Douglas Adams & John Lloyd" and The Meaning of Liff is mentioned in the publisher's copyright text.

Liff evolved from a parlour game in which you decide what a placename should mean, as in Paul Jennings's 1964 essay which explained that Bodmin was a unit of work equal to one-sixtieth of a man-hour.