Uncomplimentary Words for an Old Man
Walter Nash, 5 March 1987
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology
edited by T.F. Hoad.
Oxford, 552 pp., £12.95, May 1986,9780198611820 Show More
edited by T.F. Hoad.
Oxford, 552 pp., £12.95, May 1986,
Dictionary of Changes in Meaning
by Adrian Room.
Routledge, 292 pp., £14.95, May 1986,0 7102 0341 1 Show More
by Adrian Room.
Routledge, 292 pp., £14.95, May 1986,
The Story of English
by Robert McCrum, William Cran and Robert McNeil.
Faber/BBC, 384 pp., £14.95, September 1986,0 563 20247 5 Show More
by Robert McCrum, William Cran and Robert McNeil.
Faber/BBC, 384 pp., £14.95, September 1986,
Dictionary of American Regional English. Vol. I: Introduction and A-C
edited by Frederic Cassidy.
Harvard, 903 pp., $60, July 1985,0 674 20511 1 Show More
edited by Frederic Cassidy.
Harvard, 903 pp., $60, July 1985,
“... Thomas Hardy once told Robert Graves how he had gone to the Oxford English Dictionary to confirm the existence of a dialect word he proposed to use in a poem, and came to a standstill because the only authority quoted for it was his own Under the Greenwood Tree. This is an acute case of our dependence on dictionaries, and illustrates the commonest reason for resorting to them ... ”