Words are the building blocks of language, but their derivations are often stories in themselves. Have you ever wondered why we wear perfume, read magazines, vote for candidates, speak in jargon? Sometimes the origin of a word can be pinpointed with great accuracy - sputnik entered the English language (and many other languages around the world) on the day the Russian spacecraft was launched in 1957. Others are vaguer - butterfly goes back at least a thousand years and, sadly, there is no evidence that the creature was ever called a flutterby. With entries from assassin to villain, bankrupt to sterling, cigar to tobacco, Linda and Roger Flavell explain the origins of 300 commonly used words.
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a light-hearted trip through the fascinating byways of the English language -- Good Book Guide, March 2005
Aimed at both word-puzzle enthusiasts and language students, this is a companion to "Dictionary of Idioms" and "Dictionary of Proverbs". It contains over 500 entries on common words, their origins and their histories, and many other words are detailed in cross-references.
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