Winning words, banished words ; The life of a word, from birth to death ; The human hands behind dictionaries ; Treasure houses, theft, and traps ; Yarn and clues--New word meanings ; Smog, mob, bling--new words -- "Often" versus "Offen"--pronunciation ; Fighting over zippers ; Opening the early English word-hoard ; Safe and sound--the French invasion ; Magnifical dexterity--Latin and learning ; Chutzpah to pajamas--world borrowings -- The pop/soda/coke divide ; Maths, wombats, and les bluejeans ; Foot and pedestrian--word cousins ; Desultory somersaults--Latin roots ; Analogous prologues--Greek roots ; The tough stuff of English spelling -- The b in Debt--Meddling in spelling ; Of mice, men, and y'all ; I'm good ... or am I well? ; How snuck sneaked in ; Um, well, like, you know ; Wicked cool--the irreverence of slang -- Boy toys and bad eggs--slangy wordplay ; Spinster, bachelor, guy, dude ; Firefighters and freshpersons ; A slam dunk--the language of sports ; Fooling around--the language of love ; Gung ho--the language of war -- Filibustering--the language of politics ; LOL--the language of the Internet ; #$@%!--forbidden words ; Couldn't (or could) care less ; Musquirt and other lexical gaps ; Playing fast and loose with words.
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