In this as in many other respects I am exceptionally conscious of how much further work and thinking needs to be done. Much of it, in fact, can only be done through discussion, for which the book in its present form is in part specifically intended. Often in the notes and essays I have had to break off just at the point where a different kind of analysis – extended theoretical argument, or detailed social and historical inquiry – would be necessary. To have gone in these other directions would have meant restricting the number and range of the words discussed, and in this book at least this range has been my priority. But it can also be said that this is a book in which the author would positively welcome amendment, correction and addition as well as the usual range of responses and comments. The whole nature of the enterprise is of this kind. Here is a critical area of vocabulary. What can be done in dictionaries is necessarily limited by their proper universality and by the long time-scale of revision which that, among other factors, imposes. The present inquiry, being more limited – not a dictionary but a vocabulary – is more flexible. My publishers have been good enough to include some blank pages, not only for the convenience of making notes, but as a sign that the inquiry remains open, and that the author will welcome all amendments, corrections and additions. In the use of our common language, in so important an area, this is the only spirit in which this work can be properly done.
I have to thank more people than I can now name who, over the years, in many kinds of formal and informal discussion, have contributed to these analyses. I have also especially to thank Mr R. B. Woodings, my editor, who was not only exceptionally helpful with the book itself, but who, as a former colleague, came to see me at just the moment when I was actively considering whether the file should become a book and whose encouragement was then decisive. My wife has helped me very closely at all stages of the work. I have also to record the practical help of Mr W. G. Heyman who, as a member of one of my adult classes thirty years ago, told me after a discussion of a word that as a young man he had begun buying the paper parts of the great Oxford Dictionary, and a few years later astonished me by arriving at a class with three cardboard boxes full of them, which he insisted on giving to me. I have a particular affection for his memory, and through it for these paper parts themselves – so different from the bound volumes and smooth paper of the library copies; yellowing and breaking with time, the rough uncut paper, the memorable titles – Deject to Depravation, Heel to Hod, R to Reactive and so on – which I have used over the years. This is a small book to offer in return for so much interest and kindness.
Cambridge, 1975, 1983
RW
The welcome given to this book, in its original edition, was beyond anything its author had expected. This has encouraged me to revise it, in ways indicated in the original Introduction, though still with a sense of the work as necessarily unfinished and incomplete. In this new edition I have been able to include notes on a further twenty-one words: anarchism, anthropology, development, dialect, ecology, ethnic, experience, expert, exploitation, folk, generation, genius, jargon, liberation, ordinary, racial, regional, sex, technology, underprivileged and western. Some of these are reintroduced from my original list; others have become more important in the period between that original list and the present time. I have also made revisions, including both corrections and additions, in the original main text.
I want to record my warm thanks to the many people who have written or spoken to me about the book. Some of the new entries come from their suggestions. So too do many of the additions and corrections to the original notes. I cannot involve any of them in my opinions, or in any errors, but I am especially indebted to Aidan Foster-Carter, for a series of notes and particularly on development; to Michael McKeon, on many points but especially on revolution; to Peter Burke, for a most helpful series of notes; and to Carl Gersuny, for a series of notes and particularly on interest and work. I am specifically indebted to Daniel Bell on generation; Gerald Fowler on scientist; Alan Hall on history; P. B. Home on native; R. D. Hull on industrial; G. Millington, H. S. Pickering and N. Pitterger on education; Darko Suvin on communist and social; René Wellek on literature. I am also indebted for helpful suggestions and references to Perry Anderson, Jonathan Benthall, Andrew Daw, Simon Duncan, Howard Erskine-Hill, Fred Gray, Christopher Hill, Denis L. Johnston, A. D. King, Michael Lane, Colin MacCabe, Graham Martin, Ian Mordant, Benjamin Nelson, Malcolm Pittock, Vivien Pixner, Vito Signorile, Philip Tait, Gay Weber, Stephen White, David Wise, Dave Wootton, Ivor Wymer and Stephen Yeo.
Cambridge, May 1983
RW
The following abbreviations are used in the text.
| fw : | immediate forerunner of a word, in the same or another language. |
| rw : | ultimate traceable word, from which ‘root’ meanings arc derived. |
| q.v. : | see entry under word noted. |
| C : | followed by numeral, century (C19: nineteenth century). |
| eC : | first period (third) of a century. |
| mC : | middle period (third) of a century. |
| lC : | last period (third) of a century. |
| c. : | (before a date) approximately. |
| AN : | Anglo-Norman. |
| mE : | Middle English (c. 1100–1500). |
| oE : | Old English (to c. 1100). |
| F : | French. |
| mF : | Medieval French. |
| oF : | Old French. |
| G : | German. |
| Gk : | Classical Greek. |
| It : | Italian. |
| L : | Latin. |
| 1L : | late Latin. |
| mL : | Medieval Latin. |
| vL : |
|