Word-lovers rejoice! This fascinating book reveals the amazing and bizarre histories of language's building blocks. "A sorcerer of language".--"Publishers Weekly".

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.

“We think of English as a fortress to be defended, but a better analogy is to think of English as a child. We love and nurture it into being, and once it gains gross motor skills, it starts going exactly where we don’t want it to go: it heads right for the goddamned electrical sockets.” With wit and irreverence, lexicographer Kory Stamper cracks open the obsessive world of dictionary writing, from the agonizing decisions about what to define and how to do it to the knotty questions of ever-changing word usage. Filled with fun facts—for example, the first documented usage of “OMG” was in a letter to Winston Churchill—and Stamper’s own stories from the linguistic front lines (including how she became America’s foremost “irregardless” apologist, despite loathing the word), Word by Word is an endlessly entertaining look at the wonderful complexities and eccentricities of the English language.

The author of Opening Up draws on groundbreaking research in computational linguistics to explain what our language choices reveal about feelings, self-concept and social intelligence, in a lighthearted treatise that also explores the language personalities of famous individuals. 40,000 first printing.

This book looks at how language has evolved around the globe from ancestral proto-languages to our recognisable modern tongues. It demonstrates how language has been shaped by social and cultural influences, and even explains how our anatomy affects the articulation, and therefore evolution, of words. Discover the surprising stories behind the origin of the written word, the difficulties of decipherment and the challenge of inventing from scratch languages such as Dothraki. Combining expert analysis with accessible narrative and fun illustrations, The Secret Life of Language makes even the complex topics of philology, morphology and phonology easy to understand.

We love books. We take them to bed with us. They weigh down our suitcases on holiday. We display them on our bookshelves, give them as gifts, write our names in them. We take them for granted. And all the time, our books are leading a double life. The Secret Life of Books is about everything that isn't just the words. It's about how books transform us as individuals, the stories they tell us about ourselves. It's about how books - and readers - have evolved over time. And it's about why, even with the arrival of other media, books still have the power to change our lives. In this stylish and thought-provoking meditation, Tom Mole looks at everything from binding innovations to binding errors, to books defaced by lovers, to those imprisoning professors in their offices, to books in art, to burned books, to the books that create nations, to those we'll leave behind. A striking text in a stunning package, it will change how you think about books.

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'A mind-expanding tour of the world without leaving your paintbox. Every colour has a story, and here are some of the most alluring, alarming, and thought-provoking. Very hard painting the hallway magnolia after this inspiring primer.' Simon Garfield The Secret Lives of Colour tells the unusual stories of the 75 most fascinating shades, dyes and hues. From blonde to ginger, the brown that changed the way battles were fought to the white that protected against the plague, Picasso's blue period to the charcoal on the cave walls at Lascaux, acid yellow to kelly green, and from scarlet women to imperial purple, these surprising stories run like a bright thread throughout history. In this book Kassia St Clair has turned her lifelong obsession with colours and where they come from (whether Van Gogh's chrome yellow sunflowers or punk's fluorescent pink) into a unique study of human civilisation. Across fashion and politics, art and war, The Secret Lives of Colour tell the vivid story of our culture.