Where Words Come From

In this chapter, “Where Words Come From,” Bryson is basically explaining some of the terms we read in Yule’s book. He is explaining to us, how words in the English language are formed and where they all come from. As I read along in the chapter, I saw that he believes that many words are “borrowed from another language, and created by mistake” (71). Therefore, he decided to explain himself in this chapter, by dividing his theory into five ways in which he believes words were created.

In the first one he says “words are created by error”(71). He states that many words, such as sweetheart, pea and cherry, owe their existence to mishearing, false analogy or backformation. In the next way, he believes “words are adopted”(73). He believe this because he says we take words from almost everywhere in the world. For example, ketchup is adopted from China, potato is adopted from Haiti and sofa from Arabia. The third way, is when, “words are created”(75). He states in this section, that for a century and a half, English “flowed” with many new words. Between 10,000 and 12,000 words were coined, of which about half still exist today. But he also explains, that he believes many words are also made up by writers. In the fourth way, “words change by doing nothing”(77). He believes this means, that words stay the same, but often the meaning changes. Frequently, the meaning of a word becomes its opposite or something very similar to it. Lastly, he believes words are finished off by, “adding or subtracting something”(80). In this section, he explains certain terms we read in Yule’s book and went through in class. For example, he states that English has more than a hundred common prefixes and suffixes, such as able, ness, ment, pre and many more, that help form and reform many words with great ability.

Overall, I really found this chapter very interesting. The reason why is because I never really took the time to think about all of the ways words could be created and where they really came from. But now, after reading this chapter, I am aware that words come from all over the world and are created in many different ways; which are often “borrowed” by other languages.