About This Book
The author presents a series of lectures examining the history and development of English, arguing that the language is a composite formed by successive borrowings and native survivals. He surveys how foreign loans enrich vocabulary, how words fall into disuse, and how meanings shift over time, illustrating semantic narrowing, divergence of synonyms, and orthographic transformations. The book combines etymological examples with methodological guidance for tracing word origins and dates, notes limitations of earlier assertions, and emphasizes careful philological research while offering corrections and editorial notes to update prior claims.