• The Life of a Word, from Birth to Death

  • By: Anne Curzan
  • Narrated by: Anne Curzan
  • Length: 27 mins
  • 4.2 out of 5 stars (20 ratings)

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The Life of a Word, from Birth to Death  By  cover art

The Life of a Word, from Birth to Death

By: Anne Curzan
Narrated by: Anne Curzan
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Publisher's summary

Open the Oxford English Dictionary and you’ll find dead words such as “wittol” and distinctly contemporary words such as “ginormous” and “multislacking.” In addition to looking at the lifespan of words from birth to death, this lecture also considers “semantics” - the study of how words mean what they mean.
©2012 The Great Courses (P)2012 The Great Courses

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Hard to listen and concentrate due to performance

Narrator does not have good speaker skills. She is knowledgeable, but with all the pauses she takes while delivering each sentence I found it very hard to listen to and concentrate on what she actually was saying. This course is going to take me a long time to get through. I’m hoping that someone queued her in about her presentation and that later lectures will be much better. Assuming I can ever get myself to listen (currently trying 1.5 speed to help) past these earlier lectures.

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