Project Gutenberg's Stories That Words Tell Us, by Elizabeth O'Neill

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Title: Stories That Words Tell Us

Author: Elizabeth O'Neill

Release Date: August 15, 2006 [EBook #19052]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STORIES THAT WORDS TELL US ***

Produced by Thierry Alberto, Sankar Viswanathan, and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

STORIES THAT

WORDS TELL US

BY

ELIZABETH O'NEILL, M.A.

AUTHOR OF "THE WORLD'S STORY,"

"A NURSERY HISTORY

OF ENGLAND," ETC.

LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK, LTD.

35 PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.

AND EDINBURGH

1918

* * * * *

CONTENTS

I. SOME STORIES OF BRITISH HISTORY TOLD FROM ENGLISH WORDS

II. HOW WE GOT OUR CHRISTIAN NAMES AND SURNAMES

III. STORIES IN THE NAMES OF PLACES

IV. NEW NAMES FOR NEW PLACES

V. STORIES IN OLD LONDON NAMES

VI. WORDS MADE BY GREAT WRITERS

VII. WORDS THE BIBLE HAS GIVEN US

VIII. WORDS FROM THE NAMES OF PEOPLE

IX. WORDS FROM THE NAMES OF ANIMALS

X. WORDS FROM THE NAMES OF PLACES

XI. PICTURES IN WORDS

XII. WORDS FROM NATIONAL CHARACTER

XIII. WORDS MADE BY WAR

XIV. PROVERBS

XV. SLANG

XVI. WORDS WHICH HAVE CHANGED THEIR MEANING

XVII. DIFFERENT WORDS WITH THE SAME MEANING, AND THE SAME WORDS WITH
DIFFERENT MEANINGS

XVIII. NICE WORDS FOR NASTY THINGS

XIX. THE MORAL OF THESE STORIES

* * * * *

STORIES THAT WORDS TELL US.

CHAPTER I.

SOME STORIES OF BRITISH HISTORY TOLD FROM ENGLISH WORDS.

Nearly all children must remember times when a word they know quite
well and use often has suddenly seemed very strange to them. Perhaps
they began repeating the word half to themselves again and again, and
wondered why they had n