Origin Uncertain

Abstract The book, divided into fourteen chapters, is devoted to the origin and history of English words and idioms. Although only a hundred of them are featured in the table of contents, several thousand words—common, rare, slangy, and exotic—in English and other languages, especially German, Dutch, the Scandinavian group, French, and Latin, are mentioned or discussed in some detail in the text. A broad net is cast over language change, history, material culture, geography, and ethnography. The book will attract those who are interested in the ways words arise and develop and in how the history of the vocabulary reflects the history of civilization. Free of jargon, it does not presuppose the reader’s familiarity with the apparatus of historical linguistics and combines entertainment and instruction. It can serve as an introduction to etymology and be used in various college and high school courses.