The Economist reviews Henry Hitchings’s The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English:
…a book which is really about the way the English language has roamed the world helping itself liberally to words, absorbing them, forgetting where they came from, and moving on with an ever-growing load of exotics, crossbreeds and subtly shaded near-synonyms. It is also about migrations within the language’s own borders, about upward and downward mobility, about words losing their roots, turning up in new surroundings, or lying in wait, like “duvet” which was mentioned by Samuel Johnson, for their moment.
I want this book.
