I have found a beautiful book,

and I want to share it with you.

Indulge me.

Owen Barfield, an Oxford graduate who loves language even more than I love it, wrote History in English Words in 1953. In his Foreword, W. H. Auden calls this delicate, powerful work “a weapon in the unending battle between civilisation and barbarism.” All foes of barbarism should procure a copy immediately.

Sanskrit

This book is not an easy read, but it’s easy to keep reading it. Barfield brings his remarkable erudition to nearly every page; the reader learns much about words—in English, Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, and the Indo-European protolanguage—and learns much about history, philosophy, religion, literature, culture, mind, and the deep structures of consciously human society.

I’m not kidding. This book is unique in my experience.

Here’s a casual teaser:

“…it has been said that there are more [new words] in Shakespeare’s plays than in all the rest of the English poets put together.”

Examples of the Bard’s imagination:

advantageous, amazement, critic, radiance, dishearten, dwindle, majestic, generous, invulnerable, obscene, pedant, pious, reliance, sanctimonious

Throughout 240 pages, Barfield implicitly emphasizes a dynamic point: new words are created continuously in all languages by all peoples, and old words continuously acquire new meanings in all cultures.

Think about the fullness of our modern meanings and understandings. The way we think and express our thoughts and feelings today could not have been done as little as 100 years ago.

Take a minute and speak three carefully considered sentences about three topics that you think are important or exciting. Almost certainly, no human being has ever before experienced your exact thought processes and used precisely your words to express them.

Spread the word.

Source:

Owen Barfield, History in English Words, Hudson, NY: The Lindisfarne Press, 1953

Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2017 All rights reserved.

Book review: Grace Notes

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