The Story of English

Johnson often couldn’t resist putting in his own personal, political and occasionally prejudiced views on the correct definition of certain words:
EXCISE: A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid.
OATS: A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland appears to support the people.
MONSIEUR: A term of reproach for a Frenchman.
TORY: One who adheres to the ancient constitution of the state, and the apostolical hierarchy of the church of England, opposed to a Whig.
WHIG: The name of a faction. (Johnson was a staunch supporter of the Tory party.)

Any written history is, to some degree, defined as much by what it chooses to omit as it is by what it chooses to include.

century AD. The Celts left no written record of their history however, so we must de

For example, the Old Irish Celtic verb ‘biru’ in the first person singular means ‘I carry’.

The Language of Industry

While many of us may mourn once familiar words such as ‘seldom’, which are now seldom used, we have little choice but to embrace or adapt to the language of today.

There is only one surviving manuscript of the Old English epic poem Beowulf. Known as the Nowell Codex, it forms part of the British Library’s Cotton Collection, and is held to be one of the most important works of Anglo-Saxon literature. Miraculously, it survived a fire in the eighteenth century.

in fact there are more users of English as a first or second language, than any other language in the world

I’d like to offer my heartfelt thanks to the following people for their kind help, advice and general fortitude in assisting me with the

people for