Words are essential to our everyday lives. An average person spends his or her day enveloped in conversations, e-mails, phone calls, text messages, directions, headlines, and more. But how often do we stop to think about the origins of the words we use? Have you ever thought about which words in English have been borrowed from Arabic, Dutch, or Portuguese? Try admiral, landscape, and marmalade, just for starters. The Secret Life of Words is a wide-ranging...

"Written by a physician, Body Language - from Head to Toe is a "dictionary" of American idioms and other expressions that contain the name of a body part. The use of body part-related expressions is both interesting and fun. This book contains about 2,000 such idioms, words, and expressions, such as "with the back against the wall," "brainstorming," "sweet tooth," and "tongue in cheek." Says author Per-Olof Hasselgren, "As a surgeon, I understand...

Photographs and simple text introduce homophones, words that sound alike but are spelled differently and have different meanings.

Reviews basic grammar, including parts of speech, sentence structure, and subject-verb agreement; provides a manual of usage, instruction on writing paragraphs and research papers, and how to develop one's own style; and includes exercises and a test.

A delightfully discursive, Bill Bryson-esque and personal journey through the groves and the thickets of the English language, by our foremost scholar of the history and structure of the English language.