Studies in words

What Hacker News says

1. jacobolusFeb 2020
   Let me recommend people interested in words check out C.S. Lewis’s book Studies in Words https://amzn.com/B01GEROZMQ/, which takes a handful of words and extends their analysis far beyond anything you could find in a comprehensive dictionary.

   People might also get some use out of Garner’s Modern American Usage https://amzn.com/0195382757. DFW sorta-review https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-...

   thread
2. MrDrDrDec 2018
   He also wrote a great book called Studies in Words about how the meaning of words change over time, apparently in similar ways in different languages. It was based on a series of lectures he gave students reading old texts, that they should not apply modern meaning to an old word: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Studies-Words-Canto-Classics-Lewis/...
   thread
3. jacobolusAug 2017
   If you’re interested in this kind of thing, I recommend CS Lewis’s book Studies in Words, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studies_in_Words
   thread
4. jacobolusDec 2013
   This is a really silly argument. There is a wide variety of definitions of “nature”, which has gone through dramatic changes in its meaning though the centuries. Criticizing definitions you don’t like because the generally positive connotation of “nature” lets those definitions serve a rhetorical position that you disagree with is tilting at windmills.

   In particular, the sense of “natural” having to do with something’s unaltered/innate condition – as compared to some result of human interference – dates back at least to Plato [well, there the word was the Greek phusis, whereas natura is the Latin word used to translate it, but you get the idea]. Or if you want examples in English, at least to Chaucer.

   Note, if you want a much fuller idea of what “nature”/“natural” means and meant in the past, I highly recommend the CS Lewis book Studies in Words which devotes a 50 page chapter to comprehensively exploring the subject.

   Show morethread