WHO came up with the word Martian? What is a googol? And what is blue in English and yellow in Chinese?

Interesting questions all – and this enjoyable book has the answers.

It’s All An A Word makes you think about language, and about how we make sense of the world through words. This is a book to dip in and out of and there are fascinating facts, opinions and word games.

Vivian Cook made me realise how often we use metaphors in everyday conversation, many of which involve parts of the human body: “I put my foot in it”, “my hands are tied” and “she’s under the thumb”, to name but three. Someone learning English who was virtually fluent might still look at you blankly if you told them to pull their finger out.

Although not always clearly written, the Newcastle University professor’s offering is likely to broaden mental horizons, encouraging the reader to look behind the surface of the language they use all the time.

An interesting concept raised is that words are merely concepts in our minds used to describe things – whether they exist, such as a car, or don’t, such as a unicorn. They don’t necessarily have any bearing on reality. “The fact that we say something does not make it true of the real world, only of our beliefs about the world,” Cook tells us. Another nugget is that not all languages have exactly equivalent words. We probably say or think the word ‘water’ almost every day but speakers of Hopi, an indigenous American language, don’t have only one word for ‘water’, but a word for water in a lake and one for water to drink.