In a Word: 750 Words and Their Fascinating Stories and Origins
This fun book contains 750 word origins written in a witty short-story style. Many of the words are accompanied by "P.S.'s," that provide details about a word's history and usage. Witty illustrations by Tom Lopes showcase many of the words' visual connections. The book comes with a language chart, an index, and an introduction by a linguistics scholar.
‘Look it up in the dictionary!’ – That’s what my mother always told me when I ran across a word I didn’t understand. Good advice, yes? But this was before the internet, and lugging that hefty volume off the shelf wasn’t nearly as appealing as doing the next best thing—guessing at the meaning according to the context of the sentence. And that seemed good enough.
I’ve been doing the same thing for years when it comes to the spoken word. I adopted words I liked, heard often on television, from friends, on the university campus, and read in books, assuming I knew what they meant.
Squiglet is cute monster who can make drawings real. He lives in a plain white world. Squiglet uses a magic crayons (Squiggle Sticks) and a squiggle pad to draw a Hippo. Squiglet uses a curved line to draw a hippopotamus called Delores. She comes to a life. Delores has a big dream. She wants to learn a dance Hippo Hop. It's the big dance at the mud hole near her home on the Swimpopo River. Squiglet try to help her.
Thackeray's 'novel without a hero' follows the lives of two friends, Amelia Sedley and Becky Sharp. Amelia comes from a wealthy family but her father is made bankrupt. She marries George Osborne, a vain and superficial young man who does not really love her. Becky Sharp, on the other hand, comes from a penniless family, and is determined to use her beauty and charm to find a good position in life. What destinies lie ahead for these two young women? Audio added Thanks to elefanta
