Language Change and Nineteenth-Century Science: New Words, New Worlds, by Catherine Watts, offers a detailed exploration of the fascinating transformation that English underwent over the course of the nineteenth century, thanks to the expansion of science both inside and outside academia, and its growing influence on people’s everyday lives and language.

The nineteenth century may be considered the second part of the period of emergence of scientific English, the latter stretching, broadly, from the late seventeenth to the early twentieth century (Atkinson Reference Atkinson1999; Beal Reference Beal2004; Crespo Reference Crespo2015). This would cover the almost 250 years between the Restoration and the foundation of the Royal Society (1660) – which prompted the progressive replacement of Latin with English as the language of science and the development of the latter through various scientific genres (Bazerman Reference Bazerman1988; Gotti Reference Gotti, Dorgeloh and Wanner2010) – and the publication of Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity (1905), by which time English was already established as an international standard and scientific prose was ready to undergo further simplification (Crespo & Moskowich Reference Crespo and Moskowich2020: 6). English would become increasingly popular also through the expansion of the British Empire, its significant economic growth happening in parallel to a progressive professionalisation of science. No wonder, thus, that it was during this latter period, marked by the Industrial Revolution, that the English language underwent a major transformation with an unprecedented expansion of its vocabulary (p. xii), derived from the exponential advance in scientific discoveries and technical inventions across a wide range of fields.

In an attempt to illustrate the magnitude of this vocabulary expansion, Watts has written this exquisite book in which technical information is conveyed in the light of the most entertaining examples. As summarised by the author, ‘[t]his work explores just a selection of the many new words that entered the English language during the nineteenth century in the broad field of “science” from an etymological perspective’, and, in doing so, ‘explores in detail each word’s origin, derivation and cultural history, as well as how the word reflects the nineteenth-century Zeitgeist’ (p. 3). The book contains nine chapters: two of an introductory character, two dedicated to processes of word formation, and five devoted to some of the many scientific breakthroughs that took place in the nineteenth century, each dealing with a particular scientific subfield, namely medicine, zoology, botany, palaeontology and pharmacology.

Chapter 1, ‘What’s in a word? Exploring word histories’ (pp. 4–32), introduces the reader to the world of etymology in a straightforward yet very elegant way, by looking at the rather complex history of the term etymology provided in the Oxford English Dictionary ( OED). The provenance of this word may seem somewhat confusing to a beginner if we consider its derivation ‘partly from Old French (ethimologie) and partly from classical Latin (etymologia)’ (p. 5). As is further explained in the OED, it entered the English language twice, at two different historical moments: first, around the tenth century, from Latin, and later, after the Norman Conquest, from French. This is also the case with many other English words, among which we find the suffix -logy and the noun centre (chapter 4), the prefix psycho- and the suffix ‑mania (chapter 5), or the noun pharmacy (chapter 9), all of which appear to have multiple origins and where the usual evolution of the term ‘in reverse chronological order starting with the most recent usage and working back through time’ – such as French > Latin > Greek (p. 5) in the case of etymology – would not always provide an accurate account of their entrance into the English language. However, it certainly provides a good illustration of the rather challenging task of finding out when exactly a word has entered a language, especially in those cases where there appears to be more than one possible answer.

Chapter 1 offers a very useful summary of the history of English, with a focus on the periods when massive borrowing took place and exemplified through the forever fascinating lexical fields of food and farming. After an explanation of the pig/pork-, sheep/mutton-kind of alternations and their origins, Watts provides a detailed etymological analysis of a menu from an elite London restaurant to illustrate ‘how the words around us in the twenty-first century convey the history of the development of the English language’ (p. 9), and how they can reveal ‘the socio-linguistic, cultural and historical connections behind individual words’ (p. 12). Further into the chapter, Watts describes a number of ways in which new words have entered the language – i.e. borrowing, different types of compounding and derivation, coinages, shortening, blending, acronyms and initialisms, and two different types of eponymy – and explains the complex procedure of dating a word and tracking the semantic changes it may have undergone. A thorough description of the OED entry is then followed by a section containing a few tips for readers to help them on their ‘etymological journey’ (p. 27).

Chapter 2, ‘Selected background to nineteenth-century Britain’ (pp. 33–50), focuses on the outer history of English and deals with the sociocultural and economic factors which influenced (and were influenced by) the scientific developments in the nineteenth century and which prompted the significant vocabulary changes of that period. As the author remarks, ‘[t]he aim of this chapter is … to provide a focus to the broad field of nineteenth-century science where this has not been done elsewhere in order to contextualise the etymological research which follows’ (p. 34). Thus, chapter 2 starts with a description of the Industrial Revolution: its groundbreaking improvements in transportation and communications, the rapid advancement of mechanisation and the development of printing, which, along with the abolition of the taxes on paper and stamp duties, favoured a faster and more affordable access to information and knowledge and encouraged the advertising of goods. Watts also explains how the advancements in science and medicine in the nineteenth century were directly related to the needs of the British empire, and, particularly, to its military campaigns, which caused an urge to develop new warfare and medical equipment and to improve medical techniques. The strong association between urbanisation and poor health conditions is discussed in the subsections that follow, along with the emergence of the concept of public health and the subsequent development of urban sanitation and hospitals (including those dealing with mental health problems) and the professionalisation of nursing.

The author also offers a very interesting glimpse into the so-called pseudo-sciences, which became popular during the Victorian period parallel to true scientific research, and concludes the chapter with a list of dates that may serve as a reference for the etymological enquiries discussed in the following chapters. What makes this chapter particularly remarkable (although this comment may be extended to the whole of the book) is the fact that Watts is constantly providing references to new coinages of the period, carefully specifying the date of their coinage (or borrowing into the English language if the term was recently coined in another language, as was the case with Industrial Revolution) and, in some cases, going through their etymology (for instance, the terms lunatic asylum, lunatic house). In addition, the author explains some of those terms in the light of the beliefs and sociocultural circumstances of the period, which often helps to clarify why a particular term was adopted at a particular moment.

The two following chapters are devoted to the discussion of word-formation processes. Chapter 3 explains the process of creating nouns derived from people’s names and place names, as well as names of mythological and fictitious characters (‘What’s in a name? Exploring scientific eponyms’, pp. 51–68), and the examples given in the introductory section are equally elegant and humorous. The first part of the chapter focuses on medical eponyms and digs into the history behind several ‘eponymously-named diseases’ (p. 56), revealing interesting facts from the lives of those who discovered – or, sadly, suffered from – those illnesses. Non-medical eponyms are covered in the second part of the chapter, and here most examples relate to technology and the physical sciences. The last two sections explain how some medical eponyms have become redundant over time and remain only as historical names, whereas others have been replaced by terms directly related to the medical condition, body organ or technique for the sake of descriptiveness and avoidance of confusion.

Chapter 4, ‘Focus on affixation’ (pp. 69–86), deals with the process of derivation, which gave rise to an abundance of scientific coinages in the nineteenth century. Specifically, this chapter revolves around the formation of terms with five suffixes and five prefixes (-logy, -scope, -graphy, -meter, -phone, and hypo-, hyper-, multi-, poly-, bio-, respectively), all of which (except multi-) share a Greek origin. All the abovementioned affixes – which some authors, as well as the OED, consider to be combining forms rather than affixes (Bauer Reference Bauer1983; Quirk et al. Reference Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech and Svartvik1985; Prcic Reference Prcic2008) – are here related to ‘the broad field of science’, being ‘relevant to linguistic research simply by the sheer volume of scientific words which were coined in this way at the time’ and hence ‘giving wide scope to relevant areas of research’ (p. 71). Each of these suffixes and prefixes are dealt with in depth through a variety of carefully chosen examples, showing how some of them (e.g. -logy or -graphy) were productive not only in their primary use – i.e. in labelling a new field of study, a descriptive science or an art form – but also in the formation of (often quite humorous) nonce-formations that would refer to something original and unusual, but of particular interest at the time (e.g. undergroundology, ugliography). Stemming from this, the chapter also mentions the fascinating debates over the so-called inkhorn terms that re-emerged in the nineteenth century as a result of this profusion of coinages.

Chapter 5, ‘The naming of diseases, conditions and medical developments in the nineteenth century’ (pp. 87–117), returns to the field of medical science, and is divided into four sections. After opening with the medical advancements before 1800, the first section focuses on the naming of different illnesses through affixation and borrowing. Some examples of selected disease names are followed by interesting anecdotes, related either to the disease itself or to the process of its naming. The second section deals with vocabulary related to physicians, the advancements in their working conditions and medical instruments (sthetoscope, laryngoscope), and the increasing specialisation of the medical profession (gynaecologist, cardiologist, orthopaedist). This is followed by a third section which discusses surgery-related terms, including, among other anecdotes, an enthralling account of some practices common at the time, such as grave assault and trading corpses, essential for performing dissections and postmortem examinations before unclaimed dead bodies became legally available in 1832. The fourth section delves into the lexical field of psychiatry and mental health, offering a description of several psychiatric disorders and their histories, of the treatments common at the time and their progressive replacement as the approach to mental health patients started to become more empathetic.

A different subject altogether is discussed in chapters 6 and 7. Chapter 6, ‘Travelling the world and the naming of zoological specimens in the 1800s’ (pp. 118–51), offers a look at the work of several naturalist-explorers and describes the processes of classifying and naming some of the different animals discovered in places previously unknown to European scientists. It offers an extensive discussion of several scientific expeditions undertaken before and during the nineteenth century depicting the numerous challenges and adversities faced by the first European naturalists, who often risked their lives in the name of science. This is followed by a description of animals named after indigenous languages and of those named with an eponym (i.e. after the name of the discoverer), and ends with a classification of several other species according to their habitat. Watts also writes a section dedicated to Charles Darwin, his theory of evolution and its influence on modern biology. The final part of the chapter examines the origins of the zoological gardens (as well as the nomenclature related to the latter), which developed from a growing interest in animal diversity and became a common destination for the specimens brought to western countries from other continents.

Chapter 7, ‘Exploring the world of nineteenth-century botany’ (pp. 152–80), focuses on the numerous plant species discovered during that period, their labelling and classification. The author discusses the work of several British and some European botanists and the growing popularity of botany in the nineteenth century thanks to its key role in medicine and pharmacy. Watts mentions the understandable desire for fame and glory (p. 156); she also addresses the precarious position of the few women scientists at the time (many of whom were, indeed, botanists; see Lareo & Moskowich Reference Lareo, Moskowich, Moskowich, Lareo and Rioboó2021). As an extraordinary example of such challenging conditions for women scientists, Watts mentions botanist Jeanne Baret, who, despite her numerous discoveries, never published under her own name, but assisted Louis-Antoine de Bougainville on his expedition around the world, disguised as a man. A curious omission here, related to this story, is that of the bougainvillea, a well-known plant discovered by – and eponymously named after – the aforementioned French botanist, and first attested in English from 1866 (OED); Watts fails to mention this perhaps because it is not relevant to the story itself. Further into the chapter, we find detailed descriptions of many plant and tree species, often followed by an anecdote related to their discovery.

Two other sections in this chapter seem particularly worth mentioning. The first one is dedicated to gardening styles (pp. 158–9) and discusses the gardening boom in England during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as an attempt to imitate nature in an artistic way: something that, with a progressively growing new middle class, would become a sign of social status. This, along with the professionalisation of gardening, gave birth to many new garden-related terms and explains the popularity of botany during that period. The second section is more eclectic and focuses on the cultural, political and socioeconomic factors that had contributed to this general interest in plant cultivation, creating a demand for a variety of gardening tools and machinery, the building of greenhouses and the printing of books and magazines on the subject, urging the coining of a wide range of technical terms related to this field in the English language.

Another scientific branch that emerged and soon became popular in the nineteenth century relates to the collection and classification of fossils and the study of earth strata, and this is the subject of chapter 8, ‘Palaeontology and geological time’ (pp. 181–215). The chapter starts with the etymology of the term palaeontology and a discussion of other related terms coined in a similar manner, continuing with a large section listing the Earth’s different ages according to its strata, as well as the subsystems contained in each period and the stories behind the coinages of their respective names. Watts also offers a look at the classification of fossils and examines the terms given to their different types, describing their uses and the many superstitions around their real and suspected properties. And in a final section devoted to dinosaurs and their etymologies we learn about Mary Anning, another woman scientist – a palaeontologist – who discovered such marine creatures as the ichthyosaurus and plesiosaurus, along with one of the first pterodactyls. Chapter 9, ‘The nineteenth-century pharmacy and new chemical terminology’ (pp. 216–42), brings us back to the world of medicine, some aspects of which had already been dealt with in chapters 2, 3 and 5. The focus lies now in the growing availability of ‘on the counter’ remedies thanks to the joint work of ‘apothecaries, chemists and druggists and … pharmacists … alongside doctors, physicians and surgeons’ (p. 217). Watts explains the etymologies and meaning of the terms apothecary, chemist and druggist, and offers a very picturesque description of nineteenth-century pharmacy shops, delving into the origins and significance of almost every single piece of furniture, equipment and decoration that could be found in a pharmacy of that period. She also addresses terminology revolving around the manufacturing and selling of medicaments, poisons and other drugs, such as cleansing agents, hair products or perfumes, and some pharmaceutical inventions ‘designed to help invalids in the home’ (p. 239). The chapter ends with a short summary of the book and some concluding comments on the author’s writing process.

Overall, Language Change and Nineteenth-Century Science: New Words, New Worlds is, beyond doubt, a very practical resource for those who wish to learn interesting details about the development of medicine and several other sciences in nineteenth-century England (and other European countries, also mentioned in this work, which likewise played an important role in the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions), as well as for those interested in the extensive linguistic footprint that these developments have left on both professional and everyday spheres of activity. While this book does not appear to be particularly technical in what concerns strictly linguistic research, I would by no means consider it an inconvenience, especially if we bear in mind its conception as a starting guide for postgraduate students of English language and its history. Rather, its engaging reader-friendly tone, captivating narrative style and masterfully linked ideas make it an excellent window into historical linguistics and etymology. The following quotation from the first chapter of the book, with which I entirely agree after what was a very pleasant reading, fully justifies the work here reviewed: