Friends with Words
Adventures in Languageland
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
The word nerd gift book of the year! With warmth and humor, a popular radio and podcast host shares her love of language, weaving together linguistic history, regional phrases, the hidden poetry in etymologies, new words, and stories from her life and time on the air.
Martha Barnette has spent two decades as the co-host of A Way with Words, lauded by Mary Norris in The New Yorker as “a virtual treasure house” and “‘Car Talk’ for Lexiphiles.”
Over that time, she’s developed a keen sense of what fascinates people about language. They are curious about etymology and revel in slang, are surprised by regional vocabulary and celebrate linguistic diversity. Idioms both puzzle and delight word lovers, and they are eager to share family neologisms and that weird phrase Grandma always used to say.
In Friends with Words, Barnette weaves together all these strands in a clear, informative, highly entertaining exploration of language. Chock-full of anecdotes, humorous asides, new words, trivia, and other lexicological delights, Friends with Words also tells Barnette’s story—from her Appalachian roots through her study of Ancient Greek, and on to the making of a beloved and enduring show.
Friends with Words is an expert, good-humored, joyful read, a perfect gift book.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A Way with Words radio host Barnette (A Garden of Words) combines philology, etymology, and memoir in this entertaining chronicle of her lifelong love of language. The daughter of educators—including a mother who strictly championed proper grammar—Barnette broadened her linguistic horizons during college, thanks to the mentorship of a retired classics professor and polyglot who taught her all of Oedipus Tyrannus in the original Greek and opened her mind to the subtleties of translation. Personal anecdotes, including the story of how Barnette first met her future wife on air during a conversation about the nuances between "kind" and "nice," are interspersed with accessible dives into word origins, from mythological roots to eponyms. Elsewhere, Barnette highlights her show's frequent forays into linguistic invention, including one listener's request for a term describing late-night wakefulness; Barnette and her cohost suggested the French dorveille, which combines the French verbs dormir ("to sleep") and veiller ("to stay awake"). With a conversational tone and an infectious sense of curiosity, Barnette makes a strong case for the mundane magic of words. It's a joyful account that will delight fans of Lynne Truss.
