"A literate exploration of why we use—or mangle—our native tongue."—USA Today
Mayflower voyagers crossed an ocean without a single plow or fishing line, only to find two local braves who greeted them in fluent English. In their wake, colonial settlers cobbled together an inventive new vocabulary from borrowings, misnomers, and daily necessity.
Colonists preserved sturdy British terms that London discarded and adopted native words like skunk and caucus, building an eccentric social landscape of everyday American speech.
Bill Bryson celebrates America's magnificent offspring in the book that reveals once and for all how a dusty western hamlet with neither woods nor holly came to be known as Hollywood...and exactly why Mr. Yankee Doodle call his befeathered cap "Macaroni."
