Featuring Latinate and Celtic words, weasel words and nonce-words, ancient words ('loaf') to cutting edge ('twittersphere') and spanning the indispensable words that shape our tongue ('and', 'what') to the more fanciful ('fopdoodle'), Crystal takes us along the winding byways of language via the rude, the obscure and the downright surprising.

In this unique new history of the world's most ubiquitous language, linguistics expert David Crystal draws on words that best illustrate the huge variety of sources, influences and events that have helped to shape our vernacular since the first definitively English word was written down in the fifth century ('roe', in case you are wondering).

• We started tracking this book on March 14, 2012.
• This book was £6.29 when we started tracking it.
• The price of this book has changed 54 times in the past 4,883 days.
• The current price of this book is £5.99 last checked 16 hours ago.
• This book is at its lowest price in the past 90 days.
• This lowest price this book has been offered at in the past six months is £4.99.
• This lowest price this book has been offered at in the past year is £3.49.
• The lowest price to date was £1.29 last reached on May 23, 2012.
• This book has been £1.29 one time since we started tracking it.
• The highest price to date was £8.54 last reached on July 18, 2025.
• This book has been £8.54 5 times since we started tracking it.

• Education & ReferenceWords, Language & GrammarEtymology
• Education & ReferenceWords, Language & GrammarReference

• Publication Date: October 13, 2011
• Text-to-Speech: Disabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 300 Pages
• File Size: 42 KB