Read The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll Through the Hidden Connections of the English Language Online

Authors: Mark Forsyth

Tags: #Language Arts & Disciplines, #linguistics, #Reference, #word connections, #Etymology, #historical and comparative linguistics

The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll Through the Hidden Connections of the English Language

BOOK: The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll Through the Hidden Connections of the English Language
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Previously published in the UK in 2011 by

Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre,

39–41 North Road, London N7 9DP

email:
[email protected]

www.iconbooks.co.uk

This electronic edition published in the UK in 2011 by Icon Books Ltd

ISBN: 978-1-84831-319-4 (ePub format)

ISBN: 978-1-84831-320-0 (Adobe ebook format)

Printed edition (ISBN: 978-184831-307-1)

Sold in the UK, Europe, South Africa and Asia

by Faber & Faber Ltd, Bloomsbury House,

74–77 Great Russell Street,

London WC1B 3DA or their agents

Printed edition distributed in the UK, Europe, South Africa and Asia

by TBS Ltd, TBS Distribution Centre, Colchester Road,

Frating Green, Colchester CO7 7DW

Printed edition published in Australia in 2011 by Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd,

PO Box 8500, 83 Alexander Street,

Crows Nest, NSW 2065

Printed edition distributed in Canada by Penguin Books Canada,

90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700,

Toronto, Ontario M4P 2YE

Printed edition published in the USA in 2011 by Totem Books

Inquiries to: Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre,

39–41 North Road, London N7 9DP, UK

Printed edition distributed to the trade in the USA

by Consortium Book Sales and Distribution

The Keg House, 34 Thirteenth Avenue NE, Suite 101

Minneapolis, Minnesota 55413-1007

Text copyright © 2011 Mark Forsyth

The author has asserted his moral rights.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Typeset by Marie Doherty

Contents

Title page

Copyright

About the author

Dedication

Quotation

Author’s note

Preface

The Etymologicon

A Turn-up for the Books

A Game of Chicken

Hydrogentlemanly

The Old and New Testicle

Parenthetical Codpieces

Suffering for my Underwear

Pans

Miltonic Meanders

Bloody Typical Semantic Shifts

The Proof of the Pudding

Sausage Poison in Your Face

Bows and Arrows and Cats

Black and White

Hat Cheque Point Charlie

Sex and Bread

Concealed Farts

Wool

Turkey

Insulting Foods

Folk Etymology

Butterflies of the World

Psychoanalysis and the Release of the Butterfly

The Villains of the Language

Two Executioners and a Doctor

Thomas Crapper

Mythical Acronyms

John the Baptist and
The Sound of Music

Organic, Organised, Organs

Clipping

Buffalo

Antanaclasis

China

Coincidences and Patterns

Frankly, My Dear Frankfurter

Beastly Foreigners

Pejoratives

Ciao Slave-driver

Robots

Terminators and Prejudice

Terminators and Equators

Equality in Ecuador

Bogeys

Bugbears and Bedbugs

Von Munchausen’s Computer

SPAM (not spam)

Heroin

Morphing De Quincey and Shelley

Star-Spangled Drinking Songs

Torpedoes and Turtles

From Mount Vernon to Portobello Road with a Hangover

A Punch of Drinks

The Scampering Champion of the Champagne Campaign

Insulting Names

Peter Pan

Herbaceous Communication

Papa Was a
Saxum Volutum

Flying Peters

Venezuela and Venus and Venice

What News on the Rialto?

Magazines

Dick Snary

Autopeotomy

Water Closets for Russia

Fat Gunhilda

Queen Gunhilda and the Gadgets

Shell

In a Nutshell

The Iliad

The Human Body

The Five Fingers

Hoax Bodies

Bunking and Debunking

The Anglo-Saxon Mystery

The Sedge-strewn Stream and Globalisation

Coffee

Cappuccino Monks

Called to the Bar

Ignorami

Fossil-less

The Frequentative Suffix

Pending

Worms and their Turnings

Mathematics

Stellafied and Oily Beavers

Beards

Islands

Sandwich Islands

The French Revolution in English Words

Romance Languages

Peripatetic Peoples

From Bohemia to California (via Primrose Hill)

California

The Hash Guys

Drugs

Pleasing Psalms

Biblical Errors

Salt

Halcyon Days

Dog Days

Cynical Dogs

Greek Education and Fastchild

Cybermen

Turning Trix

Amateur Lovers

Dirty Money

Death-pledges

Wagering War

Strapped for Cash

Fast Bucks and Dead Ones

The Buck Stops Here

Back to Howth Castle and Environs

Quizzes

The Cream of the Sources

About the author

Mark Forsyth
is a writer, journalist, proofreader, ghostwriter and pedant. He was given a copy of the
Oxford English Dictionary
as a christening present and has never looked back.

In 2009 he started the Inky Fool blog, in order to share his heaps of useless information with a verbose world.

For John Goldsmith,

With thanks.

The author would like to thank everybody involved with the production of this book, but especially Jane Seeber and Andrea Coleman for their advice, suggestions, corrections, clarifications and other gentle upbraidings.

… they who are so exact for the letter shall be dealt with by the
Lexicon
, and the
Etymologicon
too if they please …

JOHN MILTON

This book is the papery child of the Inky Fool blog, which was started in 2009. Though most of the material is new some of it has been adapted from its computerised parent. The blog is available at
http://blog.inkyfool.com/
which is a part of the grander whole
www.inkyfool.com
.

Preface

(or that which is said –
fatus
– before)

Occasionally people make the mistake of asking me where a word comes from. They never make this mistake twice. I am naturally a stern and silent fellow; even forbidding. But there’s something about etymology and where words come from that overcomes my inbuilt taciturnity. A chap once asked me where the word
biscuit
came from. He was eating one at the time and had been struck by curiosity.

I explained to him that a biscuit is cooked twice, or in French
bi-cuit
, and he thanked me for that. So I added that the
bi
in biscuit is the same
bi
that you get in
bicycle
and
bisexual
, to which he nodded. And then, just because it occurred to me, I told him that the word bisexual wasn’t invented until the 1890s and that it was coined by a psychiatrist called Richard von Krafft-Ebing and did he know that Ebing also invented the word
masochism
?

BOOK: The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll Through the Hidden Connections of the English Language
6.58Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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