This new edition of the well-known definitive glossary provides the key to those terms in the English language that have either changed their meaning or been altogether discarded . . . Words common in the days of Chaucer, Shakespeare or Johnson . . . Even words known to Dickens and Browning, but today obsolete.

A fascinating handbook, not merely for the linguist and philologist, but for everyone intrigued by the colorful, the strange and the bizarre in our language.