History in English words

The work traces the history of English vocabulary and the ideas embedded in common words, arguing that changes in word-meanings reveal shifts in collective consciousness. In the first part it treats philology and the formation of the English nation, surveying linguistic inheritance, settlement, and the language before and after religious reform. The second part examines the Western outlook through themes such as myth, philosophy and religion, devotion, scientific experiment, personality and reason, mechanism, and imagination, showing how etymology and semantic change reflect intellectual, spiritual, and technological developments that reshape how people perceive and speak about the world.