Words are all around us. They are legion, ubiquitous and omnipresent in our daily lives. They live in families, possess histories, slide and break into parts, and connect across worlds, separating and connecting us. And yet, curiously, few of us know how we acquire them, learn them, connect them, and teach them best. It was my condition of relative ignorance – as an English teacher no less – that prompted a deep exploration of words. Curious about their roots, their past, their subject-spe
