The Secret Lives of Words [Hardcover]

Paul West (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 25, 2000

We are often unaware of the unique and intriguing stories of the words we love. Thousands of our words have been so twisted, tangled, misused, and muddled over the centuries that their original meaning has been obscured. You'll be surprised to learn that table napkins were once made of and referred to as asbestos, that atom means uncuttable, that a cloud was once a hill, and that a companion is one who eats bread with you. Compiled over the years in his handwritten notebooks, acclaimed prose stylist Paul West offers us an album of treasures. The Secret Lives of Words is an "Antiques Road Show" of language, in which West chronicles the centuries-long travels of words across continents and through cultures. For word enthusiasts, speakers, writers, thinkers, and all readers, this volume recounting the intimate ancestry of language will enrich our understanding of and appreciation for the words we use every day.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Paul West delights in the vicissitudes of language, and his enthusiasm is exquisitely catching. West particularly loves a good etymology (and who, deep down, doesn't?), and he's dedicated this newest of his 30-odd books to 500 of his favorite words and phrases, and the stories that go with them.

West tells a good tale, and he uses his gift to explain the derivation of words such as "Hottentot" and "humble pie," "patter," "conkers," and "nurdle." He starts with "abacus" and "ablative absolute" and works his magic alphabetically through his personal lexicon, ending with "zoot suit" and "zymurqist" (i.e., one who works with yeast, from the Greek zume for leaven and urqist for worker, as in metallurgist). Along the way, he provides definitions, usage, and derivations for "snite" (to blow one's nose without a tissue or handkerchief) and "scranny" (nuts, crazy, as in "driven scranny," from the Yorkshire dialect), as well as for more common words like "leotard" (named after James Léotard, the 19th-century French aerialist) and "decimate" (which means to kill one-tenth of, despite common misusage, and comes from the Roman practice of killing one of every 10 soldiers in times of mutiny). West's entry on "nun" explores the many food items containing that name--such as the Portuguese barriga de freira (nun's tummy) and the Neapolitan coscia de monaca (nun's thigh)--and his short essay on pumpernickel explains how (and why) the name derives from words meaning devil fart.

As fun a word book as has hit the market since Eric Partridge's Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, The Secret Lives of Words is selective instead of comprehensive, and therein lies some of its charm. It's informal. It's a taste. It's purely for the joy of the language. In his introduction, West reflects that "sadly, all words seem much the same to many people, like checkers, and they feel about them much as I do about Vivaldi's Four Seasons: all sound like Winter." Yet it's hard to imagine anyone skimming through the boondoggles and dead-cat bounces of The Secret Lives of Words and emerging without a joyous smile and a hunger for more. --Stephanie Gold

From Library Journal

Since his student days, West, the celebrated author of 18 novels (e.g., Life with Swan, LJ 2/1/99) and a dozen works of nonfiction and poetry, has kept notebooks of words that intrigue him, especially those with puzzling or obscure histories. In this wonderful little book, he shares some 400 of these words. West's special interest is in a word's origins and its evolution over time and across cultures. Each entry traces the word from its origin through its sometimes-tangled development into current usage. More than etymologies and dictionary facts, these entries are short essays about words as human "characters" with fascinating life stories. From digging up the origin of the word assassin among Muslim hashish eaters to finding the roots of quark in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, each entry gives the reader the joy of discovery and the satisfaction of untying a knot. This is a thoroughly enjoyable book that word enthusiasts, writers, and indeed any interested reader can savor. Highly recommended.
-Paul A. D'Alessandro, Portland P.L., ME
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1 edition (June 25, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151004668
• ISBN-13: 978-0151004669
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,746,372 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Alternately fascinating and irritating, September 16, 2000

By 

J Scott Morrison (Middlebury VT, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Secret Lives of Words (Hardcover)

On the whole this is a fascinating book. But sometimes West's writing is so solipsistic as to be almost indecipherable; this comes from his decision to include his own personal experiences with various of the words without giving us enough context. The best reader for this book would be one who has lived in both Great Britain and in the U.S., because many of the discussions turn on idiomatic usages from one or the other of these countries, leaving readers from the other country in the dark.

Still, the scholarship is impeccable, and the amount of delightfully arcane information is valuable.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What fun!, June 25, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Secret Lives of Words (Hardcover)

I found this a fabulous bedside book, full of West's rich language and wit, and packed with fascinating stories about the words we use everyday without knowing what they really mean. (Some of them I'll never use again without laughing.) What fun!

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A total joy, June 2, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Secret Lives of Words (Hardcover)

Paul West is a great writer, whose language is always a pleasure. Reading in this treasure trove of word histories is like curling up with a wonderful box of chocolates. Only it isn't fattening. Just plain pleasure from beginning to end.