Kate Burridge, Weeds in the garden of words: Further observations on the tangled history of the English language

Extract

Kate Burridge, Weeds in the garden of words: Further observations on the tangled history of the English language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. ix, 196. Pb $19.99.

In this sequel to Blooming English, Kate Burridge continues her metaphor of the English language as garden, this time by examining its “weeds.” As any gardener will tell you, a weed is a plant which dares to grow where it's not wanted; by extension, Burridge's “weeds” are lexical and grammatical forms in English seen as unwanted by prescriptivists. However, just as one gardener's weed is another's beautiful wildflower, words with very positive connotations nowadays were once an insult reserved for the evil (e.g., wizard), and forms such as passives, which so annoy modern style manual writers, are plentiful in many of the greatest works of English literature. Like Burridge's previous volume, Weeds consists primarily of rewritten pieces she created for a radio program and these can be read in any order.