The History of Words

Bob Greene: I think this division of the university into departments is kind of unfortunate. It makes fundamental sense because there's no reason the universe would follow or obey the demarcations of university departments that humans impose on themselves. You seem to be fascinated by the history of ideas and you always know when the word was first used. Do you think that's useful for proving anything other than the history of words, or is it just interesting? Well, to some extent it's a memory trick for me. But also, yeah, I like to waste time thinking about history.