Altered English: Surprising Meanings of Familiar Words
by Jeffrey Kacirk
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Description
Over the Centuries, innumerable English words have drifted from their original purposes and acquired vastly diferent meanings -- some subtle and others not so. This process is a continuous one, as can be seen in today's word "bad, " whose meaning is now its own opposite: "great." As another example, consider England 500 years ago. Then, "improve" meant "to make progress in that which is evil." And there was no romantic "tryst" with a man or woman; then the word meant "a fair for black show more cattle, horses, and sheep"!Author Jeffrey Kacirk, a man intrigued by words, has sifted through mountains of discarded meanings to arrive at almost 1,500 entries in this fascinating romp through the ever-changing world of lexicography. As he puts it, his goal is to "leave the reader with a sense of where many modern usages may have come from, or in some cases have strayed, whether we choose to think of the changes as corruptions or improvements."Study the altered meanings in this erudite but full book and you'll be able to "razzle-dazzle" (originally, a daylong drinking bout) your friends and acquaintances. So indulge your fancy for linguistic "esca show lessTags
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Good book for those who have an interest in words, and their origin. Another one of my mum's presents to me, but this one is really cool.
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16 Works 1,468 Members
Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 2002
- Epigraph
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I chose it to mean—neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different thin... (show all)gs."
—Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass- First words
- Our language may be "the immediate gift of God," as pious lexicographer Noah Webster declared in the preface to his 1828 dictionary, but a significant number of the words we utter today have wandered a long and often mysterio... (show all)us path, affected by countless unobserved influences. (Introduction.)
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- Languages
- English
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- ISBNs
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