Etimologia

Marco Balzano racconta la storia delle parole, dai Sumeri allo smartphone. Tra racconti, aneddoti e curiosità, ripercorriamo la storia più antica di tutte nei cambiamenti che hanno investito la società e la nostra comunicazione...

Simon Horobin takes the listener on a journey through a typical day, showing how the words we use to describe routine activities - getting up, going to work, eating meals - have surprisingly fascinating histories....

The Horologicon (or book of hours) contains the most extraordinary words in the English language, arranged according to what hour of the day you might need them....

An expert recognized for his uncovering the hidden, and often secret meaning of words, Kevin Hall now shares his wisdom with us all. In Aspire! he teaches readers to understand what words mean in their purest sense and unlock their importance as they develop a thoughtful new vocabulary. As...

A page-turning, existential romp through the life and times of the world’s most polarizing punctuation mark The semicolon. Stephen King, Hemingway, Vonnegut, and Orwell detest it. Herman Melville, Henry James, and Rebecca Solnit love it. But why? When is it effective? Have we been misusing it?...

Bitch is a bitch of a word. This eye-opening deep-dive account takes us on a journey spanning a millennium, from its humble beginnings as a word for a female dog through to its myriad meanings today, proving that sometimes you can teach an old dog new tricks.

After 40 years of making a living using words in every medium, print or electronic, except greeting cards, Roy Blount Jr. still can't get over his ABCs. In Alphabet Juice, he celebrates the juju, the sonic and kinetic energies of letters and their combinations. Blount does not prescribe proper...

Lexicographer and all-round word expert, queen of Countdown's Dictionary Corner for over 20 years, regular columnist for the Independent, Radio Times and The Week, Susie Dent is a national treasure. Her warm witty tweets reintroducing us to the words that we all need more in our lives from...

Philip Dröge neemt je mee naar een vergeten stukje geschiedenis van de Nederlandse taal. Drie eeuwen lang spraken overal in de staten...

In 2003, the book Nigger started an intense conversation about the uses and implications of that epithet....

The term "resentment" has dominated US news analysis since November 2016. Despite its increased use, this word seems to defy easy categorization....

Daniel Balmaceda ha unido en este libro sus dos pasiones: la historia y la palabra. ¿De dónde surgieron términos como "abatatarse" o "boicotear"? La historia de las palabras es la historia de nuestra propia vida. Si queremos sacar provecho de ellas, debemos conocerlas mejor....

The history of a language is the history of the people who speak it, those who read and write it, and those who come into contact with it. Now, this series invites you to explore your heritage from an unconventional angle: through the origin and development of the English language....

In On the Tip of My Tongue, logophile and television star Tom Read Wilson takes a delicious dive into the etymology and usage of words, euphemisms and bon mots. Written with his trademark sparkling wit, the star of Celebs Go Dating and self-avowed word-lover presents a hilarious and fascinating...

There are no direct records of the original Indo-European speech. By comparing the vocabularies of its various descendants, however, it is possible to reconstruct the basic Indo-European roots with considerable confidence....

What do we talk about when we talk about Irish? When we talk about saving or supporting a language do we mean the musical combination of syllables...

Las palabras viajan a través del tiempo y de las culturas, siempre yendo de libro en libro y de boca en boca. Y en ese viaje eterno, algunas sobreviven y otras fallece; entre las que conocemos y las que ignoramos, entre las que están desgastadas por su uso continuo y las que se encuentran...

The French point of view: “La langue anglaise n’existe pas. C’est du français mal prononcé.” (“The English language doesn’t exist. It is badly pronounced French.”) Georges Clemenceau, French Prime Minister, 1917-1920.

Splendiferous Speech explores the main sources of the American vernacular - the expanding western frontier, the bumptious world of politics, and the pages of popular 19th-century newspapers. It's a process that started with the earliest English colonists and is still going strong....

En este nuevo libro Daniel Balmaceda aumenta su colección sobre el origen de las palabras. Con términos novedosos y que hacen al contexto en el que vivimos (como deadline, free-lance o target), hasta el origen de la palabra "cuarentena" que tanto utilizamos en este año....