World of Words: The Personalities of Language

Readers of Gary Jennings's best-selling novels Aztec and The Journeyer know that he delights in language--in its history, in word origins, and in the relationship between language and culture. Jennings's delight is solidly based on scholarship, and this book--a revised and updated edition of his 1965 Personalities of Language--is a stylish and fascinating Baedecker to the world of words, the idiosyncrasies and eccentricities of language from caveman to adman, from hieroglyph to acronym.