About

Anatoly Liberman is a professor affiliated with the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota, specializing in German, Nordic, Slavic, and Dutch studies. His research encompasses general linguistics, folklore, historical phonology, and the origin of words, with particular focus on etymology, medieval languages and literature, Scandinavian mythology, poetic translation, and literary criticism. Liberman has contributed extensively to the understanding of the phonemic makeup and prosody of Germanic languages over centuries and has produced significant works including an etymological dictionary of English and a bibliography of English etymology. He has translated and analyzed major works of Russian poetry from the Golden Age, such as those by Lermontov, Tyutchev, and Boratynsky, and has engaged in editions of classical philological texts, evaluating contributions by scholars like V. Ia. Propp and N. S. Trubetzkoy. Liberman's scholarly activities include reviewing contemporary Russian literature, participating in international linguistic and literary journals, and serving on editorial and executive boards, notably the Dictionary Society of North America. His work has been recognized through numerous awards and fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, Fulbright Scholar Award, and the Fesler-Lampert Professorship in the Humanities. He teaches courses on Old Saxon, Old High German, Middle Dutch, German, folklore, Scandinavian myths, the history of the German language, Old Norse, German medieval literature, Icelandic saga, and German dialects. Liberman is also active in public outreach, contributing to media outlets such as the BBC, Voice of America, and The History Channel, and has been involved in translating and interpreting linguistic and literary history for broader audiences.

Research topics

• Linguistics
• History
• Philosophy
• Art
• Computer science

Selected publications

• Jenseits Der Gabe: Schätze Und Geld in Mittelalterlicher Literatur

  The Journal of English and Germanic Philology · 2025-07-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Dr. Marshall explores the economy of the Middle Ages and the attitudes of medieval people toward treasure and gold. She seeks the evidence of the greatest medieval works of literature (predominantly Germanic), knowing full well that the authors might often be biased and that literature is an unsafe transcript of life. Therefore, she also consults nonliterary sources and compares her conclusions with those of other students of literature, history, and economics. She has strong opinions, but her polemic, which, quite naturally, does not constitute the main part of her book, is always courteous. Her erudition is boundless, and probably no one will find fault with her data. Yet when year after year I slowly eat my way through German dissertations and monographs (this book is not an edited dissertation), I often wonder whether the approach, covered by the almost untranslatable German word Akribie (leaving no stone unturned, meticulousness, thoroughness) is such an unquestionable virtue. It is as though German academics always strive to show that they did not miss a single monograph or article pertaining to their topics. Hence also countless footnotes (some of them quite long), of which there are 1782 in this book.To be sure, all the relevant facts have to be discussed, but opinions converge and diverge, and in Literary Studies, every survey becomes outdated a year after its appearance, especially in the humanities, with a never-abating flood of publications in several languages on every subject. It soon becomes clear that Sophie Marshall is indeed thoroughly familiar with the literature, that she knows her subject inside out, and that one of her main sources of inspiration is Lévi-Strauss's idea of exchange being the backbone of social relations. The genre, prevalent among German scholars, partly alienates the reader, who may not always have enough time and patience to read a thick book, footnotes and all, to arrive at the denouement, interesting but long guessed at. This is not caviling. I admire the book, but if the humanities are expected to inspire, they should probably favor a format more accessible to students at all levels.The book consists of four long chapters and a relatively brief conclusion. Gold and precious stones have always existed, but money, as we understand it, is a relatively late invention. In the remote past, goods were exchanged, rather than sold and bought, and the role of gift-giving is known very well from both old poetry and the Icelandic sagas. Also, a cursed, inviolate treasure is a familiar motif in Indo-European folklore and myth from India to Scandinavia. The point made in the book is that as follows from various literary sources, keeping riches is detrimental to societal life, because exchange, rather than amassing “valuables,” is necessary and good for the community, hence the curse.The most conspicuous plots dealing with treasure are those developed in the Nibelungenlied and Fortunatus. But the episode in the last part of Beowulf, a seemingly chance and insignificant incident leading to the hero's death and the collapse of the kingdom over which Beowulf reigned for decades, is typical. One would have thought that a slave's stealing a goblet from the treasure guarded by the dragon should not have caused a global catastrophe, but the hoard is untouchable by definition. And of course, the treasure of the Nibelungen had to be buried in such a way that no one would be able to discover it. The time span between the Germanic books discussed in the monograph is three centuries (from 1200 to 1500), and by comparing them, one can follow the development of the main motifs and themes almost to the beginning of the modern period.The present investigation shows with great clarity what questions interested medieval authors and what difficulties they encountered. The plots of the early poems (the eddic lays, Beowulf, and the Nibelungenlied), as well as the late “novel” Fortunatus, drew heavily on the motifs of old myths and folklore but, quite naturally, could not ignore the views and practices of their contemporaries. To complicate matters, Christian teachings shaped the mentality and practices of the Europeans, especially of the elite, the church, and well-read authors. The Bible taught Christians not to lay treasure on earth but lay it in heaven. Yet people lived on earth, and as time went on, their economy developed and reached a state we today call early capitalism. The book traces the contradictions between the Biblical sermon, literary attitudes, and the economy as it existed at that time. Though not in such minute detail as, for example, the Nibelungenlied, discussion also turns to Hartmann's Gregorius and Wolfram's Parzival.Dr. Marshall's main achievement is of course not in the detailed retelling of plots but in her ability to show how various costly objects went into circulation, how views on exchange emerged and developed, and how attitudes toward money clashed with attitudes toward treasures. A close look at keeping and giving (the two English words are used throughout the book) determines the entire exposition. We are constantly told what, why, and whether something is “given” or “kept.” The ancient treasure was indivisible, and “giving” was thus out of the question, but on the other hand, while abroad, Kriemhild pays for the services with parts of that treasure. To repeat, money played no role in the hoard that belonged to Kriemhild or in the heap of precious objects dragons, from Fafnir on, guarded by tradition (nor did the slave in Beowulf steal coins: they would have had no value in his world). Yet in the much later Fortunatus, we already witness exchange and the use of money, and in Parzival, we get more than a glimpse of Anfortas's riches, a counterpart of a fabulous inexhaustible treasure.Since exchange, as the author insists, determined the earliest forms of medieval living, marriage was also part of that system: brides were “exchanged,” with a view to obtaining other benefits, very much like other precious objects. The author, as already mentioned, is fully aware of the fact that literature, by describing reality, distorts it and interprets the data. Her book, whose title should perhaps be translated into English as Outside of Giving: Treasures and Money in Medieval Literature (or imitating Scott Fitzgerald, should we say That Side of Giving?). Despite the title that promises a relaxed walk through famous texts, this book is slow reading, and I am sorry that it is not only learned (and from this point of view, it is exemplary) but also rather dense, because it might have become required reading for everyone interested in the literature, economy, and sociology of the Middle Ages, and not only in their Germanic context. It seems that English-speaking, French, and Scandinavian authors are more interested in making their products accessible to an audience outside of the elite circle of specialists. Dr. Marshall's monograph is a treasure, and despite its bulk it should not remain buried on a library shelf. However, its challenger must have both patience and derring-do (that is, “chivalrie and manhood”) to read the text, never leaving out the digressions and footnotes.

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• The Making of the Eastern Vikings: Rus’ and Varangians in the Middle Ages

  The Journal of English and Germanic Philology · 2025-10-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  The editors assembled a group of both seasoned and young scholars, specializing in the ties between the Varangians and the Rus’. (Those having no knowledge of the relevant terms should keep in mind that the Rus’, with the definite article, means “the Vikings, the Varangians, medieval Scandinavians,” as opposed to Rus’, a historical or poetical synonym for Russia.) The problem with this collection is that graduate students and other beginners know relatively little beyond the subject of their first topic of research, while the veterans who agree to contribute to such miscellanies tend to offer variations on what they have said before (sometimes more than once). Consequently, The Making of the Eastern Vikings . . . will be mainly of use to nonspecialists, interested in familiarizing themselves with the subject and the state of the art. Considering the proliferation of articles and monographs on every period of medieval history, this audience should not be ignored, and one should hope that the present miscellany will find its audience. Even forgetting about the essays, the bibliography appended to the volume is of great value. The book is also an impressive exhibit of the activities of the medievalists at the University of Iceland. One additional general remark is perhaps in order. Most contributors are not native speakers of English, and the texts were either translated or edited by several people. Though the unnamed editors did their work extremely well, every now and then, foreignisms do turn up, and it is easy to guess the original behind the English sentence.One of the complicated problems of medieval historiography is the use of ethnonyms. Chronicles and individual authors use the terms that may or may not coincide with those current today. Even the seemingly transparent term Varangians often needs clarification. Several papers address this problem and trace the use of ethnic names in the sources: Arabic, Medieval Russian, and others. Compare the titles of such essays as “Varangians in Arabic Sources,” “The West on the North in the East: Western Images of the Norse and the Rus’, 800–1250,” and especially “Variagi, Nemtsy, Svei, and Urmane: Scandinavians in the Chronicle Writings of Medieval Rus’.” Of interest is the statistical table on p. 72 summarizing the data in five sources, from the earliest Annales Bertiniani (compiled between 830 and 882) to Saxo. As the sources move chronologically, “the diversity of terms for the Norse increases, the number of the mentions of the Rus’ increase[s], and total mentions of all groups increase[]” (p. 73). (I have added a missing s and deleted the wrong one.) With time, the differentiation of the two groups in the eyes of the Westerners seems to have diminished.As could be expected, the historicity of the Varangian Guard occupies a prominent place in the book. Though the sagas provide a good deal of information on this subject, we confront the perennial question about the historicity of the Icelandic sagas. Their truthfulness has been the bone of contention for more than a century. The composers of so-called lying sagas wrote long prefaces to defend themselves from accusations of producing fiction, while the truthfulness of the family sagas was taken for granted by their contemporaries and much later. The paper titled “Deconstructing Værigjasaga: Byzantine and Old Norse Perspective on the Varangians and on Haraldr Sugurðarson” makes an impassioned case for the absence of the Varangian Guard between 1043 and 1081. The author's argumentation is fully convincing, but I don't quite understand why correcting old mistakes should be called deconstruction. Even though all scholarship is based on refuting some views of the past, I wonder: Can we now sound persuasive only by using trendy and catchy words? A somewhat similar theme and a similar approach (without any allusions to Derrida) informs the paper “Remembering the Varangians: Cultural Memory and Lost Identities.” As the author states, “the Varangian became an exemplary character of honour and noble behaviour, but also disconnected from Icelandic society and its mundane quarrels” (p. 150).Two more papers are polemical. One is “The Concept of ‘Varangian Christianity’ Revisited’.” It has been suggested that the Varangians practiced a distinctive form of Christianity. The paper denies this suggestion, and special attention is called to the ambiguous meaning of the term Christianity. The other polemical, even belligerent, paper (it is based on the author's Ph.D dissertation) opens the collection and is titled “Rus's Women in Islamicate Geography? Approaching a Study of Gender.” It is a feminist manifesto of the type that dominated the humanities fifty and forty years ago, rather than a research paper. Allegedly, “colonial undertones” inform historical accounts of suttee, and discussion of race has been neglected in the study of the Islamicate geographical sources on the Rus’. The paper is short, but the dissertation probably has shown the way to the misguided historians. In any case, it does not set the tone for the style of the entire miscellany.The paper, titled “The Byzantine ‘Charm Defensive’ and the Rus’,” which deals with “the long ninth century,” is aptly summarized in the conclusive statement: “The unique position of the Rus’, sharing faith but not a border with Byzantium, ultimately encouraged the development of constructive, if not intensive, exchange over the long term.” Religious issues are the at the center of the paper “Stories of Nordic Missionaries in the Eastern Way.” It deals with “Icelandic accounts from the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, which emphasizes the connection in time and the persons involved in the Christianization of Norway and Iceland and . . . of Rus’.” The paper “In Search of Haraldr harðráði's Treasures” is much broader than what this title promises. It offers a sketch of Haraldr's uneasy life, which was full of ups and downs. Both historians and archeologists will read this essay with interest. The volume closes with the paper “Origin Stories: The Kievan Rus’ in Ukrainian Historiography.” It has relatively little to say about the Varangians but given today's political situation, will certainly not be missed. The tug of war between the different views on the origins of Ukraine and Rus’ is sure to survive the war of the twenty-one-twenties.

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• Studies in Gothic

  The Journal of English and Germanic Philology · 2025-10-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  It takes many years (usually six or seven) for such collections to see the light of day, but this book was especially slow in the making. The idea behind it seems to go back to approximately 2014. Two of the contributors are now dead, and the book is dedicated to their memory. The production of the Gothic translation in the fourth century may have taken less time. However, nothing is known about the work on the magnificent Codex Argenteus, whose most famous page graces the jacket of this collection. (Unfortunately, libraries remove jackets.) Since if we disregard the earliest Runic inscriptions, Gothic is the oldest recorded Germanic “dialect,” it has been at the center of philological research for centuries, and scholars keep finding ever new features in it worthy of discussion. As far as I know, the most recent similar collection of articles devoted to this subject appeared in 2010 (The Gothic Language: A Symposium [2010]).Wulfila may have been bilingual (Gothic-Greek) and may even have supervised the translation, but we do not know who translated the parts of the New Testament that have come down to us from a Greek original. Nor has the Greek text used by the clerics been identified. Yet any study of Gothic spelling, grammar, and usage presupposes a comparative approach: Gothic versus Greek. Naturally, this approach also accounts for much of the discussion in the present collection. Even the history of the famous manuscript reads like a detective story (“The Codex Argenteus: Some English Aspects and Enigmas,” by Charles Lock and †Magnús Hreinn Snædal, pp. 10–42). Not only Greek dominated the culture of the Goths. They were surrounded by Latin speakers. Therefore, the opening chapter in the book (“Linguistic Contacts and Exchanges between Ostrogoths and Romans” by Carla Falluomini, pp. 1–9), which describes the influence of Latin on Gothic, does not come as a surprise. Our sources in this area are few. Only one short paragraph (p. 9, top) deals with Italian borrowings from Gothic. Yet it should be remembered that no one has done more for uncovering the Germanic lexical layer in modern Italian dialects than Italian scholars, and that while Old Germanic philology is on the decline at American and European colleges, it retains its position in Italy.The pronunciation of Gothic will of necessity remain a matter of speculation. For instance, the value of the digraphs ai and au has been a subject of heated controversy for a long time. It is only indisputable that those digraphs designated short /e/ and /o/ before /r h hw/. Robert Howell's paper “What Do We Really Know about Gothic Breaking? On the Problem of Consonantally Conditioned Vowel Mutation in Germanic,” pp. 75–91, deals with just this phonetic environment. Breaking is one of the most confusing terms in Germanic historical linguistics. Gothic breaking refers to the monophthongal value of ai and au in the aforementioned environment. Howell's point is that the breaking in question occurred before /h/ (a pharyngeal sound) rather than /x/ (a fricative). This conclusion is probably noncontroversial. Less appealing is the idea that the change in question was conditioned by this pronunciation. Position, far from being able to produce change, only supplies an environment for it. Likewise, a wolf can be born in a forest or in a zoo, but for the cub to come into this world, it needs father wolf and mother wolf. A language historian has to explain why a certain change occurred in the given context and why it occurred when it did. The forest and the zoo remain, but we need the parents.Phonetics is also in the focus of the late Gary Miller's paper “Gothic -ei and -iþa: A Prosodic Difference.” His starting point was that Gothic opposed short and long vowels. This premise is probably also noncontroversial. Both Gothic suffixes of abstract nouns occur on heavy monosyllabic bases. Miller suggested that regardless of the semantic split, -iþa “latched onto a prosodic domain. The nature of this domain was that the citation form was dactylic or, in the case of weitwodiþa [testimony], had a dactylic cadence” (p. 105). Assuming that this conclusion goes far enough, we get at least some insight into the living speech of the Goths. Such questions once interested Karl Helm, but few people later. A single chapter in the book deals with etymology: Patrick V. Stiles's “Gothic jains, OE geon, Old High German jenēr, and Congeners” (pp. 106–24). The root is recognizable in Modern English yon(der). The old forms are similar but irritatingly different, and one wonders whether a protoform is reconstructable. Stiles suggests *jaina-, but as often happens in a study of origins, the details of the discussion are more exciting than the end result. The protoform looks credible, even if the reconstruction of the Indo-European protoform remains an unsolved problem. Nor did Stiles attempt to go beyond Germanic.Another study devoted to a single word is “Gothic fidurdōgs ‘Four Days Old’ and Some Traces of Denominal s-stems in Germanic” by Luzius Thöny (pp. 125–40). The word fidurdōgs has been in the limelight for so long because of the striking variation by ablaut (dag- ∼ dōg-), which is not confined to Gothic, and in connection with the history of the s-stem. Though “Gothic -dōgs is likely an i-stem adjective, . . . it is phonologically possible to derive it from a P[roto]G[ermani]c s-stem” (p. 139). It is once again the details that matter here. Limitation of space prevents me from touching on them, but they are discussed in the text with the attention they deserve. (This may be the right place to note that while in all the essays included in this book, everything naturally depends on the minutiae, my summaries can at best provide a hint of the content.)Brendan Wolfe (“The Greek Compounds in the Gothic Gospels,” pp. 43–74) examined compounds for which the translator found easy matches (words like witoda-laisareis “teacher of the law”), such as needed explanatory phrases, rather than individual words (for instance, kompōlis, which a fourth-century Goth may perhaps have translated by using the collective prefix ga- but preferred the phrase haims jah baurgs “cities and towns”), and finally, such as he rewrote in Gothic letters and thus produced borrowings. Scholars who study medieval translated texts, be it the Bible or Boethius, always wonder whether the medieval translator regularly used the same gloss for translating the same word of the original and discover that such a one-to-one correspondence does not exist. Wolfe arrived at the same conclusion. Also, Wayne Harbert (“On Gothic Translations of Greek Relative Pronouns,” pp. 200–30) made it clear that “the patterning of Gothic relative markers was systematic and rule-governed, independent of, or in contrast to, the Greek model, and therefore presumably driven by the choices imposed by Gothic grammar” (p. 228; the emphasis is mine). The more we learn about the extant translation, the more we admire the medieval clerics’ ingenuity and mastery of both Greek and Gothic.The reader remains more or less in the same area with Sheila Watts (“A Prefix-Particle Verb Cycle for Germanic?,” pp. 140–71). Watts looks at the processes of grammaticalization and lexicalization of verbal prefixes in all the Old Germanic languages. One of the difficulties she experiences is the inconsistent use of word boundaries in manuscripts: it is often unclear whether we deal with adverbs or prefixes. Syntax is even more pointedly in the focus of the contribution by Artūras Ratkus (“Linearization of Adnominal Possessives in Gothic,” pp. 172–99). He sets out to discover whether possessive pronouns precede or follow the nouns they modify. This is the meaning of the term linearization. Compare English your head and Gothic haubiþ þein “head thine.” To be sure, the Gothic Bible is a translation, but as noted, the Greek text has not been found, and Greek in this context is a cover term for at least two medieval varieties of that language. Also, we are again reminded of the fact that the influence of Latin on Gothic should not be ignored. It is the Gothic deviations from the Greek word order that are especially interesting. Not unexpectedly, Ratkus discovers that the translator(s) did not always follow the Greek model: “a prenominal modifier may have been stylistically charged, but it was not wrong. . . . it cannot be ruled out that Gothic had a mixed system if the older noun-modifier was undergoing a shift to the modifier-noun order” (p. 198).Since the editors grouped the chapters thematically (as much as it was possible), it does not come as a surprise that the concluding essays (by Ratkus and the two following ones) address related problems. Gisella Ferrarsi's subject is “Temporarily Anaphoric nu and þan as Discourse-Structuring Elements in Gothic” (pp. 231–347). Gothic nu and þan mean “now” and “then.” Those are tricky words: think of the funny English phrase now then!, used to attract attention to what is going to be said. As temporal locutions, nu and þan are obvious temporal adverbs, but “because of their discourse-structural function, they can mark a new intervening event or a new topic, depending on the discourse relation introduced by the clause containing nu or þan” (p. 247).The only chapter with a strong comparative focus is “Discourse Articulation in the Gothic Gospels, with Notes on the Treatment of the Same Phenomenon in Classical Armenian and Old Church Slavic Versions” by Jared S. Klein (pp. 248–93). By now, the question he raises will sound familiar. The Gothic text that has come down to us is a translation. Did the native, uninhibited Gothic display the same markers we observe in the extant version? We'll of course never know and of necessity, should be content with what we have. The discourse articulators Klein investigated are aþþan “but, however, still, yet,” iþ “but, however, if,” þan “when, then, etc.,” nu “so, consequently,” the enclitic -(u)h “and,” two adverbs (þan and þar), followed and in one case preceded by uh; auk “because; but, also,” and finally, jah “and, even.” The English contextual glosses are mine; I added them for convenience's sake. The whole point is that they mean what they are expected to mean in any given context! All of them, as it turned out, have one feature in common: “they are capable of linking larger discourse units of the sort that, in our curated Greek text of the Gospels, are typically associated with verse-boundaries” (pp. 292–93). The repertoire in Gothic is richer than one finds in Classical Armenian and Church Slavic.Several recent discoveries and publications, as the editors indicate, made another inroad into the domain of Gothic fully justified. Who said that Gothic is a dead language? The present collection testifies to the opposite.

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• The uses of historical phonology

  North-Western European language evolution. Supplement · 2025-05-06

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Historical phonology was inaugurated by Roman Jakobson about a hundred years ago. Its main thrust was not only to represent sounds of speech as phonemes and variants (allophones) but to prove that sound change is goal-oriented. The “goal” consisted allegedly in striving by the system for regularity and efficiency. The present paper gives examples of how hard it is to determine and evaluate both those parameters. It examines two main concepts of phonology — distinctive feature and system — from the point of view of diachrony. It also attempts to show that the nature of the distinctive feature can sometimes be understood only by examining change, and that system, far from being the principal motor of change, often serves as a conservative force preventing disruption. System emerges as a motor and a brake at the same time. The final section of the paper deals with the Neogrammarian concept of relative chronology and purports to bring out some of its weaknesses.

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• History and Geography

  2024-02-22

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  Abstract This chapter begins with the word viking, coined in medieval England but made famous in the world from Scandinavian sources. (The capitalization of viking in Modern English cannot be justified on historical grounds.) Next comes an essay on yeoman, another native English term but known only from the history of England. Both words have attracted the attention of numerous researchers. It appears that viking has been explained convincingly enough from the technology of medieval seafaring, and later discussion obscures, rather than illuminates, the picture. Recently, some progress has also been made with yeoman because cognates of yeo- have turned up in an old but formerly neglected publication. With Cockney, we remain in England. (Among other things, the use of the word by Langland and Shakespeare is discussed at length.) The derivation of Cockney once caused fierce battles and a rift between British and American etymologists. Few people remember that painful episode. The etymological riddle has been more or less solved. With Buckeye and Hoosier, the narrative moves to the United States (to Ohio and Indiana, respectively). The documentation on the origin of the nickname Buckeye State is known because the beginning of the story does not remain a secret. By contrast, the origin of Hoosier has been a bone of contention, very much like the origin of Cockney. As with yeoman, good progress has been made in recent years. The present chapter defends an explanation of Hoosier as a version of a proper name.

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• Crabbed Age Looks Back at Youth and Feels Amused

  2024-02-22

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  Abstract Over the years, numerous words have been coined to ridicule new fashions and individuals who do not look like the rest of the population. Dandy, masher, dude, and nerd are typical designations invented for such people. None of the four words has an ascertainable etymology. Masher is probably the least obscure of them, and nerd is the most opaque (its connection with nut has been proposed in this book). Dandy and dude are based on the repetition of d, and the coincidence may not be fortuitous. All the words featured here surfaced as slang and still belong to this register.

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• Copyright Page

  2024-02-22

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• Marital Bliss and a Few Diversions

  2024-02-22

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  Abstract Apart from the fact that kiss, honeymoon, bicker ~ bitch, and harlot belong in some way to a similar semantic field (sex and family relations), they share a feature especially important to the structure and content of this book: each is an etymological puzzle. On the face of it, honeymoon has nothing to do with honey; bitch seems to refer to bitch (but it does not); and harlot is an etymological crux that has invited endless speculation. Discussion of kiss takes us to the origin of rites and ceremonies and the erotic sphere. Bicker appears to have emerged as a dicing term, and the story of harlot meanders through the reign of King William the Conqueror, the history of prostitution, and the niceties of the European military vocabulary (the riddle of the origin of harlot seems to have been solved). The reference to some basic medieval military terms will be picked up in the story of Harlequin (Chapter 8).

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• Our Habitat and Disposable Stuff

  2024-02-22

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  Abstract A study of words like house, home, threshold, ajar, and bed is bound up with the history of material culture, and the sections about them address some of the basic questions of civilization. One learns what thought processes stood behind calling people’s habitation “house,” why not every house could be called “home,” why thresholds were places meant for threshing corn (grain), and why it was important, in English and elsewhere, to coin a word for a half-open door. Things we dispose of and throw away (litter, trash, rubbish, and garbage) are people’s eternal companions, and the words coined to designate them are often expressive (sound-imitative and sound-symbolic). Few of them have a clear origin, and there is, predictably, little agreement about their etymology. Litter is an exception, but, in the beginning, it had nothing to do with disposable stuff. One also wonders why language makes such fine distinctions and has so many words for nearly the same thing. Gibberish belongs to this group by association. The history of its pronunciation and meaning is full of uncertainty and intrigue.

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• Origin Uncertain

  2024-02-22

  book1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract The book, divided into fourteen chapters, is devoted to the origin and history of English words and idioms. Although only a hundred of them are featured in the table of contents, several thousand words—common, rare, slangy, and exotic—in English and other languages, especially German, Dutch, the Scandinavian group, French, and Latin, are mentioned or discussed in some detail in the text. A broad net is cast over language change, history, material culture, geography, and ethnography. The book will attract those who are interested in the ways words arise and develop and in how the history of the vocabulary reflects the history of civilization. Free of jargon, it does not presuppose the reader’s familiarity with the apparatus of historical linguistics and combines entertainment and instruction. It can serve as an introduction to etymology and be used in various college and high school courses.

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Frequent coauthors

• Peter A. Jorgensen

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• D. J. Brink

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• Thomas F. Shannon

  Image Metrics (United Kingdom)

  21 shared

• Robert L. Kyes

  19 shared

• Thomas Juntune

  Michigan State University

  18 shared

• Otto Zitzelsberger

  University of Hawaii System

  18 shared

• Edward G. Fichtner

  18 shared

• Eînar Haugen

  16 shared

Awards & honors

• Fulbright Scholar Award (1988)
• College of Liberal Arts Scholars of the College, University…
• McKnight Research Award (1994 - 1996)
• VERBATIM-Dictionary Society of North America award for the b…
• Two NEH Summer Seminars (1980 and 1991)