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History of words and language


Susie in CA
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"In a Word," a book for kids about word origins, is available from the Cricket magazine group:

http://www.cricketmag.com

 

My daughter is in 8th grade, so this might be too old for your child, but I got a copy of Stephen Fry's "Fry's Delight," about puns and word play.

 

There are a lot of books in the typical bookstore about the origins of various phrases: a bird in the hand, etc.

 

We also ran across a book called "The Word Museum" by Jeffrey Kacirk. This is about words that are no longer in use -- they are fascinating. For years my daughter's favorite word was "croodle," which means to hug and snuggle like a mother animal cuddles her babies.

 

A recent acquisition is "In Other Words" by Christopher Moore, which is about words other languages have for concepts that we don't -- that we need whole sentences to explain. Some are hilarious.

 

Both these two books are good for short sessions of browsing. They're written at an advanced level but they are short and meant for entertainment, not "instruction" or historical knowledge necessarily.

 

There's also a game I found used (I think it's being discontinued) called "Bethump'd by Words," which is a board game about word origins. We enjoyed this a lot and it might be worth hunting around for.

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