Mother Tongue

[A] thoughtful, eye-opening book, which is both an etymology of womanhood and also a tender exploration of what it is to raise a daughter – Alice Vincent, author of WHY WOMEN GROW
Fascinating, intriguing, witty, a gem of a book – Kate Mosse
Full of interesting observations … Entertaining – Philip Hensher * Spectator *
Wonderful – Hannah Betts * Daily Telegraph *
Academically flawless, sharply funny and wonderfully shareable … Incredible * Woman and Home *

[Jenni Nuttall] minutely details the shifts of language and meaning over the centuries through the lens of women’s
experiences

* Observer *
A fascinating look at how we talk about women * Washington Post *
Even longtime word enthusiasts will find plenty of new trivia * New Yorker *
While I was writing this piece, I learned that Jenni Nuttall had died after a short illness. I had never met her, but I was bereft. I had shared many snippets of the book with friends … Nuttall had given me the words I lacked. Her death is a great loss * London Review of Books *
Jenni Nuttall’s Mother Tongue will easily be one of the wittiest and most insightful books of the year * Buzz Magazine *
A fresh, informative perspective on women’s lives through the centuries * Kirkus *
Edifying and enlivening, Mother Tongue excavates the history of various words, from those relating to menstruation to words used to describe violence against women * Boston Globe *
A great book on the history of women’s words in the English language – Adam Sharp * New European *
An eye-opening survey of the etymology of words used to identify women’s body parts, the kind of work they performed, and the violence they suffered from men in Anglo-Saxon English from the 400s to the 1800s (with brief forays into more recent times)… . This is required reading for logophiles, feminists, and history buffs * Publishers Weekly (starred review) *
From the womb-wicket to the child-mighty, and roaring maidens to cunning crones, MOTHER TONGUE encompasses a millennium of enthralling English parlance. Incisively scholarly, affectionately humorous (and sometimes quietly furious), Nuttall sifts the archives of centuries and listens to modern echoes, as lost voices emerge, showing how women have long spoken, and been spoken of. Vivid, philosophical, absorbing and urgent, this superb book teems with historical marvels and their 21st century resonances – Rebecca Wragg Sykes, author of KINDRED
What a revelatory delight of a book. It is richly scholarly, wry and funny, healthily grounded in women’s bodily experiences - they don’t change but attitudes towards them do, and we are clearly very mistaken if we think we are getting it right and previous generations were unenlightened. There is a nugget of joy and wisdom on every single page – Victoria Whitworth, author of SWIMMING WITH SEALS
Mother Tongue is scholarly and authoritative, but joyful, never dry, leavened with vivid etymological tidbits and Nuttall’s wry asides * Booklist *