Concise Oxford Companion to the English LanguageThomas Burns McArthur, Tom McArthur, Roshan McArthur From Sanscrit to Scouse, this is the most comprehensive, authoritative, and up-to-date single-volume source of information about the English language. Edited by one of the world's foremost authorities on the subject, this unique guide will be both essential for reference and fascinating forbrowsing. International perspective -- from Cockney to Creole, Aboriginal English to Zummerzet, Estuary English to Caribbean English Historical range -- from Beowulf to Ebonics, Chaucer to Chomsky, Latin to the World Wide Web Wide coverage of topics -- from Abbreviation to Zeugma, Shakespeare to split infinitive Substantial entries on key subjects such as African English, etymology, imperialism, Pidgin, poetry, psycholinguistics, sexism, and slang Box features include pieces on place-names, the evolution of the alphabet, the story of OK, borrowings into English, and the Internet |
Common terms and phrases
accent ACROLECT adjectives adverbs African Afrikaans alphabet AMERICAN ENGLISH BASILECT Bible borrowed Britain British CARIBBEAN ENGLISH CELTIC LANGUAGES classical clause Cockney CODE-SWITCHING common compounds consonants contrast Creole culture derived developed dialect Dictionary digraph distinct England English Language especially example French Gaelic German grammar Greek guage inflected influence Irish island Jamaican Creole Latin letters linguistic lish literary literature loan translations loans loanwords Maori mark meaning ment MESOLECT MIDDLE ENGLISH non-rhotic nouns occur Old English origin participle phonetic phrasal verbs phrase PIDGIN plural preposition pronounced pronunciation prose RECEIVED PRONUNCIATION reference RHETORIC rhotic Roman schwa ScoE Scots semantic sentence singular slang social sometimes sound Spanish speak speakers speech spelling spoken standard English stress style suffix syllable teaching term texts tion tive Tok Pisin tongue traditional translation usage usually variation varieties verb vernacular vocabulary vowel words writing