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| The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English | 
 enlarge | Author: Henry Hitchings
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Category: Book
List Price: $27.00
Buy New: $17.82
You Save: $9.18 (34%)
New (8) Used (3) from $17.82
Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 448
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.1 x 1.5
ISBN: 0374254109
Dewey Decimal Number: 422
EAN: 9780374254100
Publication Date: September 16, 2008
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Words are essential to our everyday lives. An average person spends his or her day enveloped in conversations, e-mails, phone calls, text messages, directions, headlines, and more. But how often do we stop to think about the origins of the words we use? Have you ever thought about which words in English have been borrowed from Arabic, Dutch, or Portuguese? Try admiral, landscape, and marmalade, just for starters. The Secret Life of Words is a wide-ranging account not only of the history of English language and vocabulary, but also of how words witness history, reflect social change, and remind us of our past. Henry Hitchings delves into the insatiable, ever-changing English language and reveals how and why it has absorbed words from more than 350 other languages—many originating from the most unlikely of places, such as shampoo from Hindi and kiosk from Turkish. From the Norman Conquest to the present day, Hitchings narrates the story of English as a living archive of our human experience. He uncovers the secrets behind everyday words and explores the surprising origins of our most commonplace expressions. The Secret Life of Words is a rich, lively celebration of the language and vocabulary that we too often take for granted.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 Full of facts, dry as a bone November 25, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
The Secret Life of Words is most certainly a scholarly work, and that is its strength. It's encyclopedic in its scope, and presents a detailed account of large-scale trends that shaped the modern English language.
That said, the biggest weakness of the book is its failure to engage me as a passionate fan of history. The writing style is cramped and harsh, and it reads as poorly as one of the dictionaries in the author's field of expertise. I could only recommend this book to serious etymologists; simple wordsmiths need not apply. Most of my friends--even the writers--would simply abandon this book after the first few pages because of the inelegant storytelling.
 Packed with insights and offers a lively tone November 17, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Words are key to everyday living and an average person spends the day immersed in using them but how many think about usage and its evolution? THE SECRET LIFE OF WORDS offers a history of the English language and vocabulary changes over the decades but goes a step beyond competing books in analyzing how word choices observe and record history, reflect social change, and document or change the past. From word originals and their cultural connections to the evolving meaning of everyday expressions, THE SECRET LIFE OF WORDS is packed with insights and offers a lively tone appropriate not just for high school to college-level libraries, but for general-interest lending libraries.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
Words & Wit & Wisdom November 4, 2008
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
Many self-confessed bibliomaniacs and word junkies first discovered Henry Hitchings on the publication of his first book, a creative look at Samuel Johnson and his great Dictionary, some two years ago. Now Hitchings delivers a second book targeted at the same crowd, one with a far greater scope and thus a massive challenge for even the most talented non-fiction writer: nothing less than the evolution of the English language.
Thankfully, what could have been a dry and overly-academic narrative is transformed by his style into a journey of discovery. We are at Hitchings' side as he almost literally revels in the discovery of the ways in which military and cultural invasions transformed English (not new or surprising material) to what was, to me, the fresher and more intriguing topic of how English explorers "repatriated" words from other languages they encountered, from the Americas to Japan. That thematic approach avoids another potential trap: the epoch by epoch survey, which also could have transformed this into a tedious read that none but scholars and the most dutiful or stubborn of readers would have completed. Instead, anyone reading this spend hours engrossed in an absorbing book -- and will never look at words and how he or she uses them in the same way again. Hitchings may not write for a scholarly audience, but this is far and away the best book I have read for the curious layperson on the topic, especially as our language is again being transformed by new technology (not just the vocabulary, but usage & popularity) in the same ways that it was reshaped by the advent of the printing press.
but words will never hurt me... November 4, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
And the right words can make us stronger. Hitchings expands the promise glimpsed in his previous book on Samuel Johnson. This latest offering is a word lover's dream.
Hitchings examines how the English language has developed over time. He covers thousands of words and myriad circumstances and historical events. Simply fabulous!
Our language keeps changing and adapting. Is it getting stronger? Perhaps. And if you say the word VIAGRA they will think you are speaking Sanskrit. Simply marvelous! Accessible and absorbing.
How Words Reflect Our History October 11, 2008
9 out of 12 found this review helpful
Language is simply the way we transmit ideas to others, but it is never so simple. Because it is involved in almost everything we do, it reflects and affects history, culture, fashion, cooking, politics and more. You could study English, for instance, and learn aspects of all these spheres, because, as Henry Hitchings says, "Studying language enables an archaeology of human experience: words contain the fossils of past dreams and traumas." It is just the sort of study he has undertaken in _The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English_ (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux), a big, amazing compilation about where words came from and what such histories show about world history and customs. Thousands of everyday and recondite words are herein traced and taken apart to see what made them tick and how time has changed them. Hitchings, previously known for an impressive history of Dr. Johnson's compilation of his dictionary, has a huge command of facts, but his erudition, plain on every page, is lightly expressed and his enthusiasm for his task is contagious.
Fewer than a quarter of English words reflect a Germanic origin; the rest have been imposed on Britain by being conquered nearly a thousand years ago, or by conquering or visiting all those centuries thereafter, or by sponsoring successful daughter nations. Our "cheese" is related to the Latin "caseus", for instance, but the Normans gave us plenty of food terms like "gravy" or "mustard". New imports needed new words; walnuts were new to Britain ages ago, and the name is a version of the Old English "walhnutu" which means "foreign nut"; it was from Italy, and the name distinguished it from the native hazelnut. Wherever Britons went, they ate, and they traded foods just as surely as they traded words for them. The Aztecs gave us words for guacamole, for instance, and for the tomato. Initially tomatoes were called "love apples" because of their supposed aphrodisiac qualities; perhaps this is also the reason the humble tomato is called "pomodoro" in Italian, "apple of gold". Another native Nahuatl word we got from Spanish is "avocado", which takes its name from the Nahuatl term for a testicle, because of its shape. Borrowings have to be practical; the native speakers of Nahuatl may have easily been able to say "tlilxochitl", but the pronunciation was indigestible to the Spanish, so a doctor serving in Brazil renamed it "vanilla" meaning "little sheath". That had to do with the shape of the bean's enclosure, but "coriander" comes from its particular scent. You see, it smells just like crushed bedbugs, and "koris" is Greek for bedbug. Not all the words for foods in new lands get adopted; the Hawaiian fish humuhumunukunukuapuaa may be tasty, but no one refers to it.
Words bustled among each other for acceptance. The author of a 1588 memoir of traveling in the New World and noting Algonquin terms could not have predicted that "canoe" and "tobacco" would prosper while "seekanauk", a tasty shellfish, would be forgotten. England had no tradition comparable to the vampire legends of other parts of Europe. When "vampire" was brought into English, in a magazine article in 1732, it filled a need; not only were the vampire legends adapted and expanded, the word was quickly applied to moneylenders or bloodsucking bats. Hitchings produces surprising mini-histories of words on every page here, and increases our wonder at the complexity of the borrowings we have made. France has an Academie Francaise to try to protect the purity of French against aggressive English terms, but there is no comparable academy to do the same for English. Hitchings shows that there have been many who were disgusted that English was taking so many words from other languages. Doctor Johnson was one; he fretted that there were so many Gallicisms coming into English that his countrymen would soon "babble a dialect of French." He would not include "bouquet" in his dictionary, and groused that "finesse" was "an unnecessary word which is creeping into the language." For once, Johnson missed the point, and Hitchings's book, bursting with etymologies and funny stories about words and word-users, illustrates how rich and complex English is for all its borrowings. Or, as a teacher quoted here wrote in 1582, "Our tung doth serve to so manie uses because it is conversant with so manie people, and so well acquainted with so manie manners, in so sundrie kindes of dealing."
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