John R. Taylor obtained his PhD in 1979 and was Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Otago until his retirement in 2010. He is the author of Possessives in English (1996), Cognitive Grammar (2002), Linguistic Categorization (3rd edition 2003), and The Mental Corpus (2012; paperback 2014), all published by Oxford University Press, and co-editor of the Bloomsbury Companion to Cognitive Linguistics (2014). He is a managing editor for the series Cognitive Linguistics Research (Mouton de Gruyter) and an Associate Editor of the journal Cognitive Linguistics.

• Introduction ; 1. The lure of words ; 2. How many words are there? ; 3. Dictionaries ; 4. Words and thesauri ; 5. Word frequencies ; 6. Word length ; 7. Which words do you need? ; 8. Words in second language learning and teaching ; 9. The structure of words ; 10. Word categories ; 11. Words as grammatical units ; 12. Words as phonological units ; 13. The word as a universal category ; 14. Word meaning ; 15. Words as names of categories ; 16. Terminologies and taxonomies ; 17. Lexical relations ; 18. Comparing lexicons cross-linguistically ; 19. Words as carriers of cultural meaning ; 20. Multi-word idioms ; 21. Words and their neighbours ; 22. Taboo words ; 23. Sound symbolism ; 24. Etymology ; 25. How words (and vocabularies) change ; 26. Borrowing words ; 27. Lexical layers ; 28. Word associations ; 29. Accessing words ; 30. The bilingual lexicon ; 31. First words ; 32. How infants find words ; 33. Roger Brown's 'original word game' ; 34. Names ; 35. Personal names ; 36. Place and other names ; 37. Nicknames ; 38. Choosing a name: How name givers' feelings influence name selection ; 39. Words and neuropsychological disorders ; 40. Verbal humour ; 41. Word puzzles ; 42. Do words exist? And if not, why do we believe that they do?

John R. Taylor obtained his PhD in 1979 and was Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Otago until his retirement in 2010. He is the author of Possessives in English (1996), Cognitive Grammar (2002), Linguistic Categorization (3rd edition 2003), and The Mental Corpus (2012; paperback 2014), all published by Oxford University Press, and co-editor of the Bloomsbury Companion to Cognitive Linguistics (2014). He is a managing editor for the series Cognitive Linguistics Research (Mouton de Gruyter) and an Associate Editor of the journal Cognitive Linguistics.

• Introduction ; 1. The lure of words ; 2. How many words are there? ; 3. Dictionaries ; 4. Words and thesauri ; 5. Word frequencies ; 6. Word length ; 7. Which words do you need? ; 8. Words in second language learning and teaching ; 9. The structure of words ; 10. Word categories ; 11. Words as grammatical units ; 12. Words as phonological units ; 13. The word as a universal category ; 14. Word meaning ; 15. Words as names of categories ; 16. Terminologies and taxonomies ; 17. Lexical relations ; 18. Comparing lexicons cross-linguistically ; 19. Words as carriers of cultural meaning ; 20. Multi-word idioms ; 21. Words and their neighbours ; 22. Taboo words ; 23. Sound symbolism ; 24. Etymology ; 25. How words (and vocabularies) change ; 26. Borrowing words ; 27. Lexical layers ; 28. Word associations ; 29. Accessing words ; 30. The bilingual lexicon ; 31. First words ; 32. How infants find words ; 33. Roger Brown's 'original word game' ; 34. Names ; 35. Personal names ; 36. Place and other names ; 37. Nicknames ; 38. Choosing a name: How name givers' feelings influence name selection ; 39. Words and neuropsychological disorders ; 40. Verbal humour ; 41. Word puzzles ; 42. Do words exist? And if not, why do we believe that they do?

John R. Taylor obtained his PhD in 1979 and was Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Otago until his retirement in 2010. He is the author of Possessives in English (1996), Cognitive Grammar (2002), Linguistic Categorization (3rd edition 2003), and The Mental Corpus (2012; paperback 2014), all published by Oxford University Press, and co-editor of the Bloomsbury Companion to Cognitive Linguistics (2014). He is a managing editor for the series Cognitive Linguistics Research (Mouton de Gruyter) and an Associate Editor of the journal Cognitive Linguistics.

• Introduction ; 1. The lure of words ; 2. How many words are there? ; 3. Dictionaries ; 4. Words and thesauri ; 5. Word frequencies ; 6. Word length ; 7. Which words do you need? ; 8. Words in second language learning and teaching ; 9. The structure of words ; 10. Word categories ; 11. Words as grammatical units ; 12. Words as phonological units ; 13. The word as a universal category ; 14. Word meaning ; 15. Words as names of categories ; 16. Terminologies and taxonomies ; 17. Lexical relations ; 18. Comparing lexicons cross-linguistically ; 19. Words as carriers of cultural meaning ; 20. Multi-word idioms ; 21. Words and their neighbours ; 22. Taboo words ; 23. Sound symbolism ; 24. Etymology ; 25. How words (and vocabularies) change ; 26. Borrowing words ; 27. Lexical layers ; 28. Word associations ; 29. Accessing words ; 30. The bilingual lexicon ; 31. First words ; 32. How infants find words ; 33. Roger Brown's 'original word game' ; 34. Names ; 35. Personal names ; 36. Place and other names ; 37. Nicknames ; 38. Choosing a name: How name givers' feelings influence name selection ; 39. Words and neuropsychological disorders ; 40. Verbal humour ; 41. Word puzzles ; 42. Do words exist? And if not, why do we believe that they do?