Creator
John Horne Tooke
Title
Επεα Πτεροεητα: Or the Diversions of Purley.
Coverage
London
Publisher
For the author
Date
1798, 1805
Subject
2d ed. 2 vols.
Description
Meaning “Winged Words,” the title of this book suggests its fancifully obscure style. Tooke (1736–1812) was a radical reformer in politics, law, and philology. In the 1770s, he was imprisoned for criminal libel. In 1794, in a notorious trial, he was acquitted of high treason. With quirky linguistic theories, he insisted, for example, that if is really a verb equivalent to give. The only essential words, he thought, are nouns and verbs—all others being “abbreviations.” Historical linguists today say that his influence stultified linguistic learning for many decades.