The Eclectic Encyclopedia of English

Culled from his On Language column in The Chicago Tribune, Nathan Bierma conducts a wide-ranging discussion of topics related to English language. He gets under the hood to find out what etymologists do to arrive at their conclusions (they get under the hood), looks at dictionaries through the eyes of those who make them (and catches them making up a word to catch would-be word pirates), and ponders simple usage questions (lay or lie? bring or take? could care less or couldn t care less?) in ways you may not have considered before. He also fields questions from his readers and shows off some of the more interesting Australian slang, horse racing cliches, untranslatable terms, birding vocabulary, and lots more.