Professor Jacobus H. Eath
DPhil (Oxon)
Historian of language, embarrassment and civilisation
By his own reluctant admission, Professor Eath is the world’s leading authority on words that respectable scholars would rather not mention. His work treats bad language with the sort of solemnity usually reserved for scripture, funerary monuments and university parking disputes.
A Life in Questionable Philology
“My aim is simple: to restore dignity to indecency, and to prove that the lowest words often reveal the highest truths.”
After several decades of research, a handful of expulsions, and one incident with a university senate he is legally advised not to discuss, Professor Eath gathered his findings in The Odyssey of a Word series.
Each volume traces the improbable cultural and linguistic history of one indelicate expression, approaching the subject with all the seriousness, footnotes and barely concealed pomposity the English language can endure.