Borrowings in informal American English come from various languages. Unsurprisingly, Spanish has contributed the most expressions, accounting for almost half of the entire database. Borrowings from Yiddish are the second most frequent group, followed by a few other key language donors and numerous lesser donors. Interestingly, some expressions are a result of borrowing from two donor languages; still others are the result of pseudo-borrowing, a playful imitation of a foreign language. In general, findings corroborate the common perception that the top contributor of borrowings in informal American is Spanish, but they also reveal a few unexpected contributors whose whose impact on informal American English is pronounced.

Chapter 14 opens by asking readers to produce several nouns to label an unusual object and then to describe their demonstration’s main activity in several ways. The chapter describes research with K-12 science classes showing learning boosts when concepts are taught before new terms for the concepts and that students are more interested when such terms are minimized. Jargon is the ultimate in new information, so spotting it is a critical first step toward clearer and more effective demonstrations. Strategies for jargon spotting are exemplified: words with Latin or Greek etymology (e.g., "pharyngeal"), acronyms (e.g., "SVO" for subject-verb-object), ambiguous words with both general and specialized meanings (e.g., "stress"). Many experts new to public engagement find it hard to avoid jargon. A demonstration on syntactic ambiguity shows that it can even be done with esoteric or abstract topics. Thus, while jargon is one of the tools of science, incomplete is not incorrect. The Worked Example discusses an online text editor’s markup of a draft sentence. This chapter’s Closing Worksheet asks readers to aim such an editor to the written support for their demonstration.

When Horace first published the Odes in 23 BCE, in an edition comprising the eighty-eight poems of books 1–3, Ode 3.30 stood as a self-reflexive epilogue in which the poet surveyed his work and announced the achievement of his own goals. Its clear and confident claims to poetic immortality resonate pointedly in form and tone with Horace’s earlier statements. The first two lines of the poem are particularly forceful, and feature one of the collection’s more memorable images and more durable phrases.

Historical toponomastics is the discipline that deals with the reconstruction of the roots of toponyms in the context of well-known languages/language families (e.g., Indo-European) and in the presence of available historical records. The analysis of the etymology and morphology of a place name occurs not just at the linguistic level, but also incorporates the assessment of the territory’s geology and hydro-geo-morphology. This chapter presents a step-by-step guide in historical toponomastics that involves both linguistic and extra-linguistic analyses. The authors apply this to two toponyms from the Indo-European language family, Sessame and Squaneto, both located in Piedmont, northwest Italy. This chapter also discusses the notion of ‘folk etymology’ and ‘toponymic paretymology’, often observed in the stories told by local speakers trying to explain the origins and meanings of their toponyms. These ‘explanations’ may not always be accurate. These, indeed, originate from the linguistic misinterpretations of place names, when the original morphology and/or meaning of toponyms are lost over time. This chapter explores two types of toponymic paretymologies – ‘bona fide paretymology’ and ‘scholarly paretymology’, with examples from both Indo-European and non-Indo-European contexts. The chapter also presents an in-depth discussion of contact etymology.

The opening chapter examines the forebears of Cicero’s notion of will in Greek thought and Roman usage in the period before his birth, with special attention given to the playwrights Plautus and Terence. There was no “will of the people” in classical Greece. The demos wielded power not by delegation but in active, autonomous decision. There is no special discourse of representation in classical Athens, because in classical democracy (unlike today) there is no permanent governing class. In the Republic, Plato proposes that reason and appetite reside in different parts of the soul; though we succumb to appetite despite “knowing better,” in a harmonious soul as in a just city, reason must rule. Plato’s star student is the first to propose a full theory of human action, but neither Aristotle’s boulesis (the desire for ends) nor his prohairesis (the choice of means) map onto the faculty that Latin speakers would call voluntas. It is the Stoics, and particularly Epictetus, who have been credited by some as inventors of the will due to their intense focus on regulating our inner responses to events and forming the correct intention.

This chapter proposes a brief lexical history of the English term ‘responsibility’, starting from the Latin ‘respondere’, through French and Anglo-Norman, up to the emergence of the abstract noun in modern languages. Seen from a purely semantic diachronic perspective, ‘responsibility’, as a legal term, expresses the idea that one may be called upon to answer for one’s activity (or inactivity) but does not itself denote the prerequisites of liability nor hints at the source or nature of any duty to do so. It looks at what is to be done in the future, not to the imputation of a duty by reference to what has gone before. If the meaning that history brings to light is quite neutral – and pivots around the ordinary, basic meaning of the verb ‘respondere’: ‘to say something in answer to a question’ – ‘responsibility’ appears nonetheless to be most appropriate to signify the distinctive feature of contemporary international law, namely that States ‘have to answer’ for their actions.

Introduction to the topic of weeds in history, especially early medieval European history.

This chapter gives a sample list of more than twenty Hausa lexical retentions from Proto-Chadic and a comparable list of basic Hausa words without cognates in sister Chadic languages. Also included is a discussion of interesting individual etymologies including boko ‘Western practices’, kasuwa ‘market’, laba ‘pound (weight)’, and zuciya ‘heart’.

It is true that most teachers have limited knowledge of how words work in English. Linguistics hasn’t been a feature of their own schooling or their teacher education, and you can’t teach what you don’t know. The good news is that it isn’t hard to build the knowledge – in fact, it’s fun. In this chapter we look more closely at the linguistic threads that contribute to the rich tapestry of each word: etymology, orthography, phonology and morphology.

Chapter 3 outlined four key principles for teaching spelling: start with meaning; teach spelling explicitly; teach a repertoire of spelling knowledge; and integrate spelling instruction into all subject areas. This chapter introduces a 10-step process for planning and implementing a spelling program that is grounded in those four principles. Interspersed among the steps in the planning process are some of the questions teachers and parents frequently ask as they embark on the implementation process. What would your answers be? My responses are posted at the end of the chapter.

This chapter is focused on getting spelling assessment right, and expands upon steps 9 and 10 in the program planning process, introduced in chapter 4: assessing spelling in use, and keeping records of teaching and learning.

Chapter 2 described how words work in English, and provided guidance on what to teach in spelling. Just as important as knowing what to teach is knowing how to teach, and that is the focus of this chapter. Many teachers simply teach spelling the way they were taught – through a list of words to be learned for an end-of-week assessment. However, research shows that this is an ineffective way to learn to spell. This chapter outlines four key principles for teaching spelling, each based on what the research tells us about how we learn to spell. 1 Start with meaning. 2 Teach spelling explicitly. 3 Teach a repertoire of spelling knowledge. 4 Integrate spelling instruction across all subject areas.

Language is an inherently creative process. New words are constantly being coined that add richness to our verbal communications with one another. The origin of words is the central concern of the branch of linguistic science called etymology. This field of study offers us rare glimpses into this creative process. I explore three words derived from dramatic works: malapropism, ignoramus, and robot. The histories of these words are unusually interesting and revealing as to the time and place of their origins. Wit, scorn, and foreboding, respectively, revolve around this trio of “playful” words.