You are not alone. Nearly 80% of office workers have admitted that they often simply don’t know what their colleagues are talking about. If you are one of them, help is at hand!

An alphabetical discussion of words from early English authors, including the most interesting, informative—and revivable—English words that have lapsed from general use. Includes: 1) Words likely to be met in literary reading. Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, the Tudor pamphlets and translations, are richly represented in words and illustrative quotations. The late 18th and early 19th century revival has been culled: Chatterton, Ossian; Percy’s Reliques and Child’s Ballads; Scott, in his effort to bring picturesque words back into use. In addition, anthologies, for the general reader or the student, have been examined, and works they include combed for forgotten words. 2) Words that belong to the history of early England, describing or illuminating social conditions, political (e.g. feudal) divisions or distinctions, and all the ways of living, of thinking and feeling, in earlier times. Anxiety, for example, is indicated, not in the 99 phobias listed in a psychiatric glossary of the 1950s but in the 120 methods (see areomancy) of determining the future. 3) Words that in various ways have special interest, as in meaning, background, or associated folklore. Included in this group are various imaginary beings, and a number of magic or medicinal plants. 4) Words that are not in the general vocabulary today, but might be usefully and pleasantly revived.

We all think we know what a dictionary is for and how to use one, and go right to the words we wish to look up. Yet dictionary users have not always known how English 'works' and this book reproduces and examines important texts in which early dictionary authors explain choices and promote ideas. Fixing Babel provides authoritative transcriptions of documents from the front matter of major English dictionaries over a two-hundred-year period. It also provides commentary on, and annotation of, a wide range of lexicographical concerns.

Brilliantly entertaining and enlightening, this volume tells the story of Samuel Johnson's endeavor to create an authoritative English dictionary. Hitchings describes Johnson's adventure--his ambition and vision, his moments of despair, the mistakes he made along the way, and his ultimate triumph.