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Did you see John Ayto’s A Century of New Words (ISBN 978-0-19-921369-6 Oxford University Press) on the piled-up table just inside the bookshop door? Did you dismiss it with "Reference, that’s not for me"?

Look again! He has written your history into his pages. I find myself in his sixties section, ‘Teenagers set the trends, and the hemlines – minis, midis, maxis, kinky boots and Chelsea boots, flares and hipsters, thongs and caftans. Tights (or pantyhose) saw off stockings and suspenders. As male hair lengthened, the unisex look came in.’

He analyses how new words reflect the preoccupations of each decade from Queen Victoria and the 1900s with newcomers like Coke (1909) and panties (1908) to the present with words like freedom fries (‘a polemical alternative name proposed in the US for French fries as a sign of America’s grave displeasure with France for declining to support its invasion of Iraq in 2003′)

How effectively he evokes war decades, austerity, anxious cold war years and today’s technology (blogs, bloggers and blogospheres, for example!)

Here’s where to find the meaning of podcasting, bling or mission creep. All those words that can make you feel out of touch.

It’s a great read, easy to pick up and put down again, instructive and often amusing.

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