500 Years of New Words

Book excerpt: If you ever use words and find yourself wondering where they came from, who wrote them first, and why they became necessary, then you will savour 500 Years of New Words, a new volume that takes you on an exciting journey through the English language from the days before Shakespeare to the first decade of the twenty-first century. The entries are arranged not alphabetically but in chronological order based on the earliest known year that each word was printed or written down.