New Words for Old: Recycling Our Language for the Modern World

Caroline Taggart

nov 2015 · Michael O'Mara Books

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The English language is a versatile and agile thing, and as our world changes, so too does the way we use it. Sometimes we coin new words for new creations, but very often we adopt and adapt existing words to suit new purposes, or simply put two together to form a third.

New Words for Old looks at the story behind some of the words we use every day and how their meanings have changed over time. From technology and fashion to politics and music, our language displays centuries of imagination and creativity, so often overlooked.

Tracing the development of green from the days when it was just a colour, web when it was something spiders made and trolls when they were nothing more threatening than the baddies in fairy tales, this is a fascinating tour through the history of the words we use every day and demonstrates just how wide we cast the net when trying to describe something new.

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Caroline Taggart worked in publishing as an editor of popular non-fiction for thirty years before being asked by Michael O'Mara Books to write I Used to Know That, which became a Sunday Times bestseller. Following that she was co-author of My Grammar and I (or should that be 'Me'?), and wrote a number of other books about words and English usage. She has appeared frequently on television and on national and regional radio, talking about language, grammar and whether or not Druids Cross should have an apostrophe. New Words for Old and Misadventures in the English Language are her latest books for Michael O'Mara, with The Accidental Apostrophe: Misadventures in Punctuation due in Autumn 2017.

Her website is carolinetaggart.co.uk and you can follow her on Twitter @citaggart.