Jeff Jeske

Storied Words: the Writer's Vocabulary and Its Origins Jeff Jeske

From alphabet to zeugmaStoried Words reveals the picturesque stories of 1,000 words that we use to talk about writing. You will learn about: The actual pictures behind our alphabet letters (e.g., "A", the inverted head of an ox; "B," a two-chambered house; "Z," a sword and shield) The surprising common origin of grammar and glamourThe literal meanings of our rhetorical devicesThe "meaningless chatter" in jargon's ancestryThe picturesque origins of the words we use to talk about styleThe "mock song" of parodyHow and why the librarian of the great ancient library of Alexandria gave us the comma, the colon, and the periods. Each chapter begins with an introductory essay followed by alphabetized discussions of individual words. Chapter topics include the writer's tools, patterns of arrangement, style, rhetorical choices, grammar, writers in academe, and publishing. Storied Words is chock full of quotations and anecdotes from writers throughout history; it also contains an essay on the history of the English vocabulary.