Studies in Words

A study of semantic history published by Cambridge University Press in 1960 and based on lectures Lewis gave at Cambridge; a second edition in 1967 added further chapters. Each chapter follows a single English word, with its Greek and Latin relations, through the changes of meaning it has undergone, among them nature, sad, wit, free, sense, simple, conscience and conscious, world and life. Lewis's purpose is practical: to warn readers of older literature against assuming that a word means what it means now, and to show how meanings branch, narrow and die. The introduction and closing chapter on 'the fringe of language' consider how words are used to express emotion and how they decay into words of mere approval or disapproval. The book shows the philological learning that underlay all of Lewis's criticism.