Words in Time

The transformation of words over time

The English language has evolved with history, and vocabulary changes have coincided with historic changes. Words in Time: A Social History of English Vocabulary traces how the meanings of English words have changed along with social transformations. The book lets you follow words that represented eras in British history, the emergence of capitalism, and the evolution of democracy. See examples of how printing and mass media have generated changes in language at a remarkable rate, as well as how words are used to advance political propaganda. Preface vii

Acknowledgements ix

Sources and Abbreviations x

1 Introduction: Words and Social Change 1

2 Words of Conquest and Status: The Semantic Legacy of the Middle Ages 32

3 Moneyed Words: The Growth of Capitalisim 67

4 The Mobilization of Words: Printing, the Reformation and the Renaissance 92

5 The Fourth Estate: Journalism 125

6 Advertising Linguistic Capitalisim and Wordsmitting 155

7 Words and Power: Democracy and Language 182

8 Ideology and Propaganda 203

9 Conclusion: Verbicide and Semantic Engineering 224

Epigraph Sources 251

Bibliography 253

Subject Index 263

Word Index 268

Geoffrey Hughes is Professor of the History of the English Language at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. A graduate of Oxford University, he has held academic and research posts at Cape Town, Harvard and Turin. His main interests are in historical semantics and sociolinguistics on which he has written over twenty papers and two books, Words in Time (Blackwell, 1988) and Swearing (Blackwell, 1991). He is a consultant for the Collins Dictionaries on South African English and has been editor of the journal English Studies in Africa.