Interview on NPR’s “Morning Edition” about the impact that Charles Dickens had on the English language. (Feb. 7, 2012)
Dickens’ novels often had more than 100 characters — major and minor — each with their portraits vividly painted — each with their own characteristic manner of speaking. Ben Zimmer of Visual Thesaurus wrote a birthday column calling attention to commonly used names and expressions that had their origins in Dickens: We call a miserly person a “Scrooge”; we refer to grouches who say “bah humbug”; and in Bleak House, it’s Mr. Snagsby who uses the expression “not to put too fine a point on it.”
(Show page, audio, related Word Routes column)