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,
“... the rivalries of race, region and class, pronunciation is obviously important, and grammar too, as William Labov has effectively shown in his studies of Black English: but the most visible differentiations are borne by idiom and vocabulary. What you call things raises you up, puts you down, or sets you just where you choose to be. (When I was a boy, we called ... ”