From Publishers Weekly
From its first vernacular translations, the Bible has been a record of the development of the English language. Such indispensable words as fisherman, cucumber, liberty, puberty, crime and conscience all made their entry into the written language in its pages, while deathless feats of biblical phrasemaking like "apple of his eye" and "no man can serve two masters" still pepper speeches everywhere. Word lovers and Bible scholars alike will delight in this compendium of the Bible's bequests to the English language. Malless and McQuain, authors of Coined by Shakespeare, include 150 detailed, sprightly entries, organized alphabetically, that provide etymologies of words and phrases, a record of their appearances and variations in Bible versions from the first English translation by William Wycliffe in 1382 to the King James Version, as well as classic and contemporary examples of their usage in secular contexts.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
An account of 150 locutions from genesis to salt of the earth that debuted in English translations of the Bible; from a professor of education and a researcher for the New York Times Magazine's "On Language" column, respectively.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
