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The Story of English in 100 Words by David Crystal
In his excellent introduction,David Crystal describes the unusual methodology of this book. He states that there are two common ways of approaching a history of the English language.
One can use a straight forward historical method by analysing the sequential development and trends through Old, Middle, and Modern English. Discussions of specific words are limited by demands of space. This gives a good overall picture. He compares it to seeing a forest as a whole but few individual trees. A contrasting method is seen in books of word lists which examine interesting words and phrases. This lets us see the individual trees but gives little idea of the total bounds of the forest.
David Crystal has used both methods. In this book he is combing the two approaches. He has a word list which follows a chronological scheme beginning with the oldest word (roe) and ends with the modern “twittersphere”. Each choice in between has a specific historical relevance to the growth of the language.
The method works perfectly.
The word list includes useful cross references which keep the historical spectrum before us. But one can also dip into the book at random simply for the enjoyable discussions of a specific word.
Anyone interested in both the growth of English and in the history of words in their own right will enjoy this book.
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