San Antonio College Library

The American poet and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson described the English language as "the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven." With more than 4,000 entries, this dictionary explains the meanings and origins of terms that have entered the English lexicon from foreign tongues. Drawn from the fields of language and literature, religion, law, politics and economics, music, entertainment, and cuisine, entries include a definition...

Prima facie, this dictionary defines world and phrases, mostly Latin and French, found in English usage, particularly in the field of law. Mirabile visu!

Previously published under title: Dictionary of foreign terms found in English and American writings of yesterday and today.

Writers have celebrated the fruitful dialogue between English and Yiddish for decades. In this engrossing lexicon, Gene Bluestein reveals the full extent of that dialogue, introducing "Anglish, or Anglicized Yiddish, in which a Yiddish word is integrated into English usage, as in 'shmo' and 'shmoozing'; and Yinglish, or Yiddishized English, in which an English word is integrated into Yiddish usage, as in 'allrightnik,' or the expression 'a Heifitz...

An updated version of the informal dictionary which offers the history and folklore behind Yiddish and Hebrew words as well as literal translations adds information on linguistic and cultural changes since Rosten's day.

Allusions form a colourful extension to the English Language, drawing on our knowledge of literature and mythology to give a shorthand for describing people, places, and events. This text explains the meanings of the allusions in use in modern English.

This book tells 150 fascinating stories about words and expressions that have made their way from Spanish to English.

Do you know when to cry Mazel tov -- and when to avoid it like the plague? Did you know that Oy! is not a word, but a vocabulary with 29 distinct variations, sighed, cried, howled, or moaned, employed to express anything from ecstasy to horror? Here are words heard 'round the English-speaking world: chutzpa, or gall, brazen nerve, effrontery, " ... that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and his father, throws himself on the...

O Brave New Words! by Charles L. Cutler is the first book published on the more than one thousand North American Indian, Eskimo, and Aleut words in the English vocabulary. Though little acknowledged, these loanwords are indispensable today. They name animals and fish that sustained Indians and early settlers: moose, muskrat, opossum, raccoon, sockeye, and terrapin. They designate plants common in North America: catalpa, hickory, pecan, tamarack, and...