Bill Bryson's Where Words Come From

The Come Up of Cool: "Where Words Come From" In "Where Words Come From," Anglo-American author, Bill Bryson goes into thorough detail about words and how they were formed. He sets up five categories in which he chooses to better discuss the range of word origins and with these categories comprehension of a word's origin, meanings and significance in present day life becomes easier to understand. A popular word that one may come across at one point or another is the word cool. This well known word that is defined as a low temperature, a calm setting or as a slang word meaning awesome or hip, has not always carried these definitions. With Bryson's "Where Words Come From," one will be able to better comprehend and appreciate how the word "cool" formed, along with its multiple meanings and significance in everyday life. In Bryson's piece, he explains that words are formed in five ways: by adding to them or subtracting from them, by creation, by adoption, by error or by doing nothing to them and cool is one of many words that happened to be formed simply by creation. Mike Vuolo, writer of the article "The Birth …show more content…
By the 16th century, the definition of cool had evolved from a temperature setting to a meaning of calmness or rationality. Vuolo also provides an example, "A 'cool hand' reaches out from more than three centuries ago, a 'cool customer' gains purchase, and we’re all kindly asked to 'keep cool.'” It's meaning then changed again in the 1940's. Ben Zimmer, author of "When 'Cool' Got Cool" explains, "In jazz circles, cool (as in 'That's cool,' 'He's cool,' or simply 'Cool!') first came to be associated with sax player Lester 'Pres' Young in the early '40s...that same year, music critics picked up on the use of cool to describe a new, more relaxed style of jazz" (par. 5). After that, cool became a very popular term