Editors’ introduction

Chapters in this book

1. Prelim pages i
2. Table of contents v
3. Foreword & acknowledgements vii
4. List of abbreviations ix
5. Editors’ introduction xi
6. Part I. Etymology
7. Etymology and the OED 3
8. On the etymological relationships of wank , swank , and wonky 21
9. Base etymology in the historical thesauri of deverbatives in English 29
10. Part II. Semantic fields
11. The global organization of the English lexicon and its evolution 65
12. Repayment and revenge 85
13. Semantic change in the domain of the vocabulary of Christian clergy 99
14. Part III. Word-formation
15. Abstract noun ‘suffixes’ and text type in Old English 119
16. The lexicalisation of syncope 133
17. Oriented - ingly adjuncts in Late Modern English 147
18. Part IV. Textlinguistics, text types, politeness
19. Historical text linguistics 167
20. Repetitive and therefore fixed? 189
21. Politeness strategies in Late Middle English women’s mystical writing 209
22. A diachronic discussion of extenders in English remedies found in the Corpus of Early English Recipes (1350–1850) 223
23. “It is with a trembling hand I beg to intrude this letter” 237
24. Genre analysis 255
25. Index 267