A fascinating collection of seasonal words and phrases exploring their origins and the development of meaning over time. By celebrated author on language and linguistics, David Crystal Brings together some 200 personalities from across time includin...

This book is a pioneering exploration of Tyndale's enormous impact on the development of the English language. "Dearly beloved", "say the word", "the powers that be", "for ever and ever" - these familiar phrases and many more were set down in print...

In this ingenious and diverse collection of 366 stories, events and facts about language, David Crystal presents a selection of insights from literary and linguistic writers, poets and global institutions, together with the weird and wonderful creati...

The vocabulary of past times, no longer used in English, is always fascinating, especially when we see how it was pilloried by the satirists of the day. Here we have Victorian high and low society, with its fashionable and unfashionable slang, its c...

Here is a real treat for lovers of English - the very first dictionary in our language. Contrary to popular opinion, this honour goes not to Samuel Johnson, whose definitive tome appeared in 1755, but to Robert Cawdrey, who published his "Table Alpha...

Written for the benefit of Ladies, Gentlewomen or any other unskilfull persons, this was not a book for scholars but was aimed squarely at the non-fiction best-seller list of its day. It is a treasure-house of meaning, bristling with arresting and em...

We're all familiar with "a flock of sheep" but what are the collective nouns for racehorses, pigs, zebras or giraffes? Drawing on a range of sources, from fifteenth-century hunting terms to more recent inventions that have now entered the language, t...

For the first six centuries from the institution's foundation, Latin was the language spoken and written at the University of Oxford. It's no surprise, then, to find that the inscriptions carved into the monuments, colleges and municipal buildings of...