Did you know that the English language has over 150 words for the adjective 'drunk' developed over 1,000 years? Be prepared to learn words you have never heard before, find out fascinating facts behind everyday words, and be surprised at how lively and varied the English language can be. Published to critical acclaim in 2009, the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary is the first comprehensive thesaurus in the world to arrange words by meaning in order of first recorded use. Using its unique perspective on how the English language has developed, Words in Time and Place takes 15 themes and explores the language in these areas over time - explaining when new words appeared, where they came from, and what such changes say about times in which they emerged. The themes chosen are varied, universal topics and show the semantic range of the thesaurus and what it can tell us about the words used in areas of everyday life. Learn about the different words for dying and money, or types of pop music, as well as words for a privy, oaths, and words for being drunk. Written by the world's leading expert on the English language, David Crystal, the book carries his trademark style of engaging yet authoritative writing. Each chapter features an introduction to the language of that topic, followed by a timeline of vocabulary taken from the historical thesaurus showing all the synonyms arranged in chronological order. The timelines are annotated with additional quotations, facts, and social and historical context to give a clear sense of how words entered the English language, when, and in which context they were used. Words in Time and Place showcases the unique and excellent resource that is the Historical Thesaurus and reveals the linguistic treasures to be found within. This fascinating book will appeal to anyone with an interest in words and in the development of the English language.

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The Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary is the ideal dictionary for advanced EFL/ESL learners. Easy to use and with a great CD-ROM - the perfect learner's dictionary for exam success. First published as the Cambridge International Dictionary of English, this new edition has been completely updated and redesigned. - References to over 170,000 words, phrases and examples explained in clear and natural English - All the important new words that have come into the language (e.g. dirty bomb, lairy, 9/11, clickable) - Over 200 'Common Learner Error' notes, based on the Cambridge Learner Corpus from Cambridge ESOL exams Plus, on the CD-ROM: - SMART thesaurus - lets you find all the words with the same meaning - QUICKfind - automatically looks up words while you are working on-screen - SUPERwrite - tools for advanced writing, giving help with grammar and collocation - Hear and practise all the words.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK • “Delightful . . . [a] captivating and slyly subversive fictional paean to the real women whose work on the Oxford English Dictionary went largely unheralded.”—The New York Times Book Review “A marvelous fiction about the power of language to elevate or repress.”—Geraldine Brooks, New York Times bestselling author of People of the Book Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, an Oxford garden shed in which her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Young Esme’s place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word bondmaid flutters beneath the table. She rescues the slip and, learning that the word means “slave girl,” begins to collect other words that have been discarded or neglected by the dictionary men. As she grows up, Esme realizes that words and meanings relating to women’s and common folks’ experiences often go unrecorded. And so she begins in earnest to search out words for her own dictionary: the Dictionary of Lost Words. To do so she must leave the sheltered world of the university and venture out to meet the people whose words will fill those pages. Set during the height of the women’s suffrage movement and with the Great War looming, The Dictionary of Lost Words reveals a lost narrative, hidden between the lines of a history written by men. Inspired by actual events, author Pip Williams has delved into the archives of the Oxford English Dictionary to tell this highly original story. The Dictionary of Lost Words is a delightful, lyrical, and deeply thought-provoking celebration of words and the power of language to shape the world. WINNER OF THE AUSTRALIAN BOOK INDUSTRY AWARD

*A New York Times Notable Book* *A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice* *A Publishers Weekly Top Ten Book of the Year* Binyavanga Wainaina tumbled through his middle-class Kenyan childhood out of kilter with the world around him. This world came to him as a chaos of loud and colorful sounds: the hair dryers at his mother's beauty parlor, black mamba bicycle bells, mechanics in Nairobi, the music of Michael Jackson—all punctuated by the infectious laughter of his brother and sister, Jimmy and Ciru. He could fall in with their patterns, but it would take him a while to carve out his own. In this vivid and compelling debut memoir, Wainaina takes us through his school days, his mother's religious period, his failed attempt to study in South Africa as a computer programmer, a moving family reunion in Uganda, and his travels around Kenya. The landscape in front of him always claims his main attention, but he also evokes the shifting political scene that unsettles his views on family, tribe, and nationhood. Throughout, reading is his refuge and his solace. And when, in 2002, a writing prize comes through, the door is opened for him to pursue the career that perhaps had been beckoning all along. A series of fascinating international reporting assignments follow. Finally he circles back to a Kenya in the throes of postelection violence and finds he is not the only one questioning the old certainties. Resolutely avoiding stereotype and cliché, Wainaina paints every scene in One Day I Will Write About This Place with a highly distinctive and hugely memorable brush.

As the tricolor rose over revolutionary France, language, with its ability to define ideals and allegiances, was both a threat to authority and weapon to be wielded. In the early years of the Republic, the Académie Française, the royal body responsible for the French language, was suppressed by the National Convention at the urging of the Abbé Grégoire and the artist Jacques-Louis David. However, by 1795, the National Convention recognized that language could be used to its advantage, leading it to commission a fifth edition of the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française, which would unquestionably become the most controversial edition in the Académie's history. The National Convention expected this dictionary to champion the ideals of Revolution and Republic, but when it appeared three years later it did quite the opposite. Instead, the fifth edition virtually ignored the Revolution and the linguistic innovations that had transformed the French language, even omitting two of the most famous and enduring neologisms spawned by the Revolution--ancien régime and Terror. Present-tense definitions of abolished institutions and anachronistic values dominated the work and the Revolution was consigned to a brief and hastily-prepared supplement at the end of the second volume. Because of its failure to capture the current state of the French language, most contemporaries judged it harshly, and its deficiencies led the Parisian publisher Nicolas Moutardier to publish a competing dictionary in 1802. The dictionary became the focus of protracted litigation that Napoleon Bonaparte's government increasingly used to assert its control over language. Indeed, Bonaparte met personally with the commission of the Institut National (the republican successor to the Académie) and made clear his desire that the new edition not contain revolutionary neologisms. Eager to see the new edition appear, the Bonapartist regime committed financial resources and established a timetable for its completion within five years. However, it was only in 1835, after the fall of Bonaparte and the Bourbons, that the sixth edition would appear. Although the Académie was one of the most prominent institutions under the Old Regime, scholarship on the Académie remains largely neglected. Drawing on previously untapped sources in the Archives de l'Institut and Archives Nationales, The Place of Words is the first book-length study of the controversial fifth edition of the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française. Spanning more than half a century of changing regimes, this study provides unique insight into the ways in which each government, from the publication of the fourth edition in 1762 to the sixth in 1835, viewed the role of language as an instrument of control.

For the past twenty-five years Americans have relied on Pulitzer Prize-winning wordsmith William Safire for their weekly dose of linguistic illumination in The New York Times Magazine's column "On Language" -- one of the most popular features of the magazine and a Sunday-morning staple for innumerable fans. He is the most widely read writer on the English language today. Safire is the guru of contemporary vocabulary, speech, language, usage and writing. Dedicated and disputatious readers itch to pick up each column and respond to the week's linguistic wisdom with a gotcha letter to the Times. The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time marks the publication of Safire's sixteenth book on language. This collection is a classic to be read, re-read, enjoyed and fought over. Fans, critics and fellow linguists wait with bated (from the French abattre "to beat down") breath for each new anthology -- and, like its predecessors, this one is bound to satisfy and delight. Safire finds fodder for his columns in politics and current events, as well as in science, technology, entertainment and daily life. The self-proclaimed card-carrying language maven and pop grammarian is not above tackling his own linguistic blunders as he detects language trends and tracks words, phrases and clichés to their source. Scholarly, entertaining and thoughtful, Safire's critical observations about language and slanguage are at once provocative and enlightening. Safire is America's go-to guy when it comes to language, and he has included sharp and passionately opinionated letters from readers across the English-speaking world who have been unable to resist picking up a pen to put the maven himself in his place or to offer alternate interpretations, additional examples, amusing anecdotes or just props. The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time is a fascinating, learned and piquant look at the oddities and foibles that find their way into the English language. Exposing linguistic hooey and rigamarole and filled with Safire's trademark wisdom, this book has a place on the desk or bedside table of all who share his profound love of the English language -- as well as his penchant for asking "What does that mean?" Or, "Wassat?" This new collection is sure to delight readers, writers and word lovers everywhere and spark the interest of anyone who has ever wondered, "Where did the phrase 'brazen hussy' come from?"