"This historical tour of the English lexicon considers words as etymological 'fossils of past dreams and traumas,' revealing the preoccupations of the ages that produced them. The nineteenth century’s 'cult of fine feelings' gave currency to 'sensibility' and 'physiognomy'; 'popery' and 'libertine' sprang from the religious skepticism of the sixteen-hundreds. Many such relics began as imports: centuries of Anglophone empire-building have occasioned borrowings from some three hundred and fifty languages, including Arabic ('sash') and Sanskrit ('pundit'). The chapters are loosely focused on different themes, but trade is a constant thread: 'tycoon' comes from taikun, a Japanese honorific picked up on Commodore Matthew Perry’s eighteen-fifties mission to open the ports of Japan. Hitchings offers a rich array of anecdotes and extracts."—The New Yorker

"Many will know that the word 'muscle' comes from the Latin for 'mouse' (rippling under the skin, so to speak). But what about 'chagrin', derived from the Turkish for roughened leather, or scaly sharkskin. Or 'lens' which comes from the Latin 'lentil' or 'window' meaning 'eye of wind' in old Norse? Looked at closely, the language comes apart in images, like those strange paintings by Giuseppe Arcimboldo where heads are made of fruit and vegetables. Not that Henry Hitchings’s book is about verbal surrealism. That is an extra pleasure in a book which is really about the way the English language has roamed the world helping itself liberally to words, absorbing them, forgetting where they came from, and moving on with an ever-growing load of exotics, crossbreeds and subtly shaded near-synonyms. It is also about migrations within the language’s own borders, about upward and downward mobility, about words losing their roots, turning up in new surroundings, or lying in wait, like 'duvet' which was mentioned by Samuel Johnson, for their moment . . . At every stage, the book is about people and ideas on the move, about invasion, refugees, immigrants, traders, colonists and explorers. This is a huge subject and one that is almost bound to provoke question-marks and explosions in the margins—soon forgotten in the book’s sheer sweep and scale . . . The author’s zest and grasp are wonderful. He makes you want to check out everything . . . Whatever is hybrid, fluid and unpoliced about English delights him."—The Economist

"There's not a word in English that isn't furled-up history, resonating to some degree withits notorious unfairness and spin. Indeed, to peer into words is to discover dioramas of vanished worlds with model people busily framing meaning to suit their own purposes. I have never read a book that so perfectly reveals those hidden worlds as Henry Hitching's The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English. The book follows the 'pedigree and career' of the English language through history, exposing its debt to invasions, to threats from abroad, and to an island people's dealings with the world beyond its shores. In doing this, Hitchings lays bare the general spirit of acquisitiveness that informs English as no other language. But, for all that, his true object is to reveal past frames of mind and to show how our present outlook is informed by the history squirreled away in the words we use. This is an enormous undertaking, and Hitchings does it with deft command. He begins with the familiar story of how the basic fabric of English was woven from Germanic Anglo-Saxon and French Norman threads, and how the social hierarchy of those groups is reflected in words: those derived from Anglo-Saxon being neutral and earthy; those from Norman French smacking of sophistication and ease. It's all English; nonetheless, the most persistent acrimony over keeping English free of foreign contamination is internecine: Anglo-Saxon derived words are generally considered purer and stronger, more oaken as you might say, than French-derived ones, which are 'artificial, barbarous and infused with the dark scent of depravity.' Centuries of cross-channel animosity exist in this prejudice, efflorescing (to use an un-oaken word) now and again in eccentric partisans of Anglo-Saxon. Hitchings presents us, for instance, with the 19th-century clergyman William Barnes, who 'preferred wheelsaddle to bicycle and folkwain to omnibus.' For him, pathology was painlore and forceps were nipperlings. The book is full of that sort of entertainment. But Hitchings goes well beyond curious tales to penetrating discussions of changes in consciousness, o