Bookish Words & their Surprising Stories

By: David Crystal

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Hardcover | 10 April 2025

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Hardcover
176 Pages

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18.4 x 11.8

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The world of books has played a striking role in the history of English vocabulary. Book itself is one of the oldest words in the language, originating from boc in Old English, and appears in many commonly used expressions today by the book, bring to book and bookworm to name a few.

With the arrival of printing, typesetting and the development of the newspaper industry came terminology that developed into commonly used phrases such as stop the press, front-page news and hit the headlines, and the emergence of the internet generated still more.

This anthology presents a selection of more than 100 words which show the influence of writing, reading and publishing books on our everyday vocabulary over the centuries, telling the stories behind their linguistic origins, and uncovering some surprising twists in the development of their meaning through time.

About the Author

David Crystal is a writer, editor, lecturer and broadcaster on language, and honorary professor of linguistics at Bangor University. His many books include The Cambridge Encyclopedia of English Language (CUP 3rd edn, 2019) and A Date with Language (Bodleian Library 2023).

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