Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- A few words before we start
- Acknowledgements
- 1 How do languages change?
- 2 Why are languages always changing?
- 3 Where do words come from?
- 4 Skunk-Leek – my kind of town: what's in a name?
- 5 Where does English come from?
- 6 Why is American English different from British English?
- 7 Why is English spelling so eccentric?
- 8 Which is the oldest language?
- Some final thoughts
- Further reading
- Index
3 - Where do words come from?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- A few words before we start
- Acknowledgements
- 1 How do languages change?
- 2 Why are languages always changing?
- 3 Where do words come from?
- 4 Skunk-Leek – my kind of town: what's in a name?
- 5 Where does English come from?
- 6 Why is American English different from British English?
- 7 Why is English spelling so eccentric?
- 8 Which is the oldest language?
- Some final thoughts
- Further reading
- Index
Summary
The romance of word origins
Every language has thousands of words, and every one of those words must have an origin of some kind – that is, it must have come from somewhere. Words can have all kinds of origins, but mostly they come from other words, in the same language or in other languages. The study of word origins is called etymology, a laborious and exacting business requiring considerable erudition. You have practically no chance of uncovering the origin of any word unless you have an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of the history of every language (and its speakers) that might possibly be relevant to your task – and even then you won't get far unless you know how and where to locate dusty and forgotten documents buried in out-of-the-way archives, and how to use those documents.
This is not obvious when you consult a reference book giving word origins. There are several large scholarly etymological dictionaries of English, each of them soberly reporting everything that has so far been uncovered about the origins of thousands of English words, and there are many more popular books on word origins which typically present some of the more engaging word origins. And word origins can certainly be engaging. Who is not delighted to learn that bikini takes its name from that of a Pacific atoll where some early atomic bombs were tested, on the ground that the effect of the new costume was comparably ‘explosive’?
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- Information
- Why Do Languages Change? , pp. 39 - 63Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009