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Secret Life of Words How English Became English

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ISBN-10: 0312428561

ISBN-13: 9780312428563

Edition: 2009

Authors: Henry Hitchings

List price: $28.00
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Description:

Alcatraz Island was named by a Spanish explorer who arrived in 1775 to find the island covered with pelicans, oralcatraces. And "alcatraces"? The word goes back to the Arabical-qadus, which was a bucket used in irrigation that resembled the bucket beaks of pelicans. What does a walnut have to do with walls? The word comes from the Old English walhnutu, meaning foreign nut. They were originally grown in Italy and imported, and the northern Europeans named them to distinguish them from the native hazelnut. Cravat comes from the French word for a Croatian. The French adopted the garment from Croatian mercenaries in the seventeenth century. The word mortgage literally means death grip. The…    
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Book details

List price: $28.00
Copyright year: 2009
Publisher: Picador
Publication date: 9/29/2009
Binding: Paperback
Pages: 448
Size: 5.50" wide x 8.25" long x 1.00" tall
Weight: 0.748
Language: English

Louise Elizabeth Gluck, 1943 - Louise Gluck was born April 22, 1943 in New York City, New York. She grew up on Long Island and attended Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University, both in New York State. She is best known for her award winning collection entitled "The Wild Iris". After graduation, Gluck began teaching poetry, accepting positions at various colleges and universities. In 1968, her first collection entitled "Firstborn" was published. Seven years later she published "The House on the Marshland", and in 1985, "The Triumph of Achilles" won the National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry. In 1993, she was an editor of The Best American Poetry anthology. Her last appointment…