O brave new words!

by Charles L. Cutler

O Brave New Words! by Charles L. Cutler is the first book published on the more than one thousand North American Indian, Eskimo, and Aleut words in the English vocabulary. Though little acknowledged, these loanwords are indispensable today. They name animals and fish that sustained Indians and early settlers: moose, muskrat, opossum, raccoon, sockeye, and terrapin. They designate plants common in North America: catalpa, hickory, pecan, tamarack, and tupelo. And they identify foods originating with the Native Americans: corn pone, hominy, and succotash. Organized along historical lines, the book intersperses background chapters between narrative chapters that trace the European settlers' acquisition of an Indian-derived vocabulary. Cutler examines which Native American words were selected and the rate of loanword borrowing; fluctuations in borrowing, he demonstrates, reflect crucial events in European settlement and changes in the relationship between whites and Indians. The borrowing o