Research Catalog

Title

Gallimaufry : a hodgepodge of our vanishing vocabulary / Michael Quinion.

Author

Quinion, Michael.

Publication

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2006.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xiii, 272 p.; 21 cm.

Summary

• "The story of these and many other words is brought to life by the author, and illustrated by numerous historical references and quotations form writers down the years, including Samuel Pepys and Jane Austen, William Shakespeare and Patrick O'Brian."--Jacket.
• "Words are always changing, and here language writer Michael Quinion has made his own selection of some of the most interesting examples of words and meanings that are vanishing from our vocabulary." "Sometimes a word is lost when the thing it describes becomes obsolete: would you wear a billycock? Sometimes it survives in a figurative sense while the original meaning is lost: what was the first paraphernalia? Sometimes it simply gives way to a more popular alternative: who still goes to the picture house to watch the talkies?"

Subject

English language > Obsolete words

Note

• Includes index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Food and drink -- Health and medicine -- Entertainment and leisure -- Transport and fashion -- Names, employment, and communications.

ISBN

0198610629

LCCN

• ^^2006049925
• 9780198610625

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library