The Word Atlas

What does the word ‘ostracise’ have to do with ancient Greek pots? How did the term ‘pyjamas’ work its way from Urdu into English? And is there any truth in the claim that English is ‘just badly pronounced French’?

We tend to think of the English language as distinctly, well, English. In truth, however, it is a smorgasbord – or should that be mélange? – of words purloined (Norman French), looted (Sanskrit) and commandeered (Afrikaans) from around the world.

In The Word Atlas, Rob Watts – leading word nerd and the world’s most-followed etymology YouTuber – takes readers on a confounding tour through the surprisingly global origins of the English words that we use every day. From the Latin origins of ‘anchor’, via the Hindi ‘Bungalow’, to the appalling recent US import ‘cheugy’, Watts provides an almanac of eighty words that illuminate the international tale of our mother tongue: showing that the most English of words are the product of countless generations of immigration, colonialism and globalisation.

Wryly amusing and unexpectedly insightful at turns, The Word Atlas is both a compendium of etymological did-you-know facts and a vividly global history of our language. It shows that the history of English is about vastly more than boring old England.