Essays demonstrating how the careful study of individual words can shed immense light on texts more broadly.

The papers in this volume show the range and direction of current work in historical semantics and word-studies. There is a strong focus throughout on semantic change and lexical innovation, interpreted within a sociolinguistic, cultural or textual context. Many of the papers draw on the remarkable range of electronic resources now available to historical linguists, notably corpora, dictionaries, bibliographies and thesauruses, and show the effects that these have had in stimulating new lines of research or the re-interpretation of previous conclusions. Cognitive semantics, and especially prototype theory, emerges as a challenging theoretical framework for much current research. The volume contains a selection from papers presented at the 10th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (10ICEHL). They include work on historical lexicography and an account of the workshop on electronic dictionary resources, such as the Revised Oxford English Dictionary, which formed the centrepiece of the Fourth G. L. Brook Symposium.

This book is an accessible introduction to lexicography – the study of dictionaries. Dictionaries are used at home and at school, cited in law courts, sermons and parliament, and referred to by crossword addicts and Scrabble players alike. Lexicography provides a detailed overview of the history, types and content of these essential references. Howard Jackson analyzes a wide range of dictionaries, from those for native speakers to thematic dictionaries and those on CD-ROM, to reveal the ways in which dictionaries fulfil their dual function of describing the vocabulary of English and providing a useful and accessible reference resource. Beginning with an introduction to the terms used in lexicology to describe words and vocabulary, and offering summaries and suggestions for further reading, Lexicography: An Introduction is highly student-friendly. It is ideal for anyone with an interest in the development and use of dictionaries.

From the contents: Maurizio GOTTI: The origin of 17th century canting terms. - Anne MCDERMOTT: Early dictionaries of English and historical corpora: in search of hard words. - Paivi KOIVISTO-ALANKO: Prototypes in semantic change: a diachronic perspective on abstract nouns. - Manuela ROMANO POZO: A morphodynamic interpretation of synonymy and polysemy in Old English."

These papers reflect the long and distinguished career of Professor Jane Roberts in the field of medieval English studies, and especially her pioneering work on A Thesaurus of Old English, which provides novel source material for several of the contributions to the volume. Many of the papers deal with aspects of early lexicology and lexicography, while others focus on linguistic and literary features of Old and Middle English texts and their interpretation. They will thus be of interest to researchers in many areas of early English. A special introductory article describes the interlinked development of A Thesaurus of Old English, The Historical Thesaurus of English, and the proposed Thesaurus of Middle English. Contributors include: Rosamund Allen, Janet M. Bately, Carole P. Biggam, Michelle Brown, Julie Coleman, Janet Cowen, Jodi-Ann George, Joyce Hill, Rosemary Huisman, Giovanni Iarmartino, George Kane, Éamonn Ó Carragáin, Michiko Ogura, Peter Orton, Jeremy J. Smith, E.G. Stanley, Paul Szarmach, Ronald Waldron.

Words, Words, Words is all about the wonder of words. Drawing on a lifetime's experience, David Crystal explores language in all its rich varieties through words: the very building blocks of our communication. Language has no life of its own: it only exists in the mouths and ears, hands, eyes and brains of its users. As we are guided expertly and passionately through the mysteries and delights of word origins, histories, spellings, regional and social variations, taboo words, jargon, and wordplay, the contribution we all play in shaping the linguistic world around us becomes evident. Words, Words, Words is a celebration of what we say and how we say it. It invites us to engage linguistically with who we are: to understand what words tell us about where we come from and what we do. And as they continually shape our lives, it suggests ways that we can look at words anew and get involved with collecting and coining words ourselves.

This volume brings together fifteen articles exploring the linguistic and literary foundations of lexicography and lexicology. Topics explored here include a discussion of the relationships between lexicography and ideology in China; Frisian legal language and the Deutsches Rechtswörterbuch; the history and lexicography of Faroese; Wortgeschichte digital and its relation to Grimmian tradition; the linguistic history of phonetically imitative words; and studies of Croatian, Czech, English, Greek, and Turkish historical dictionaries. The book also presents a digital and textual study on the status of eponyms across the history of the Royal Society, as well as a study of German paronym dictionaries, a modern history of bilingual Russian-Tajik terminological dictionaries, and a historical overview of the lexicography of Frisian. The research findings and close readings by expert practitioners and historians of dictionaries and word studies found in the pages of this volume continue to broaden critical perspectives upon the study of manuscripts and print artifacts; dictionaries and standard varieties; biographies; bibliography and text analyses; dictionary production; and corpus and digital analyses.