India, Feb. 7 -- There's a century I particularly favour, when it comes to word histories. Two consecutive ones, actually: the 16th and 17th.

So much was happening in urban England at this time. Society was changing; London was growing. This was nothing like the boom the city would see in the 1800s, but new terms were still needed for new customs and business practices. Old words were being redefined. And the English language itself entered a significant phase of formalisation, with the emergence of early dictionaries and standardised spelling.

Because so much of everyday language was now being entered into the written record (via diaries, novels, plays, poems), we can look back and see the Latin, Old French and Old English take new jou...