His book The Story of Language (1949) was acclaimed for its presentation of technical linguistics concepts in ways that were entertaining and accessible to a general audience.

[1] Pei was born in Rome, Italy, and emigrated to the United States with his mother in order to join his father in April 1908.

In 1923, he began his career teaching languages at City College of New York, and in 1928 he published his translation of Vittorio Ermete de Fiori's Mussolini: The Man of Destiny.

Arrangements were made with George Van Tassel's Community Funeral Home in Bloomfield, N.J., and burial at St. Raymond's Cemetery in the Bronx followed.

The majority are "coined" words, forms that have been in one way or another created, augmented, cut down, combined, and recombined to convey new needed meanings.