The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll Through the Hidden Connections of the English Language
Authors: Mark Forsyth
Tags: #Language Arts & Disciplines, #linguistics, #Reference, #word connections, #Etymology, #historical and comparative linguistics
Previously published in the UK in 2011 by
Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre,
39–41 North Road, London N7 9DP
email:
[email protected]
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
Bloody Typical Semantic Shifts
Psychoanalysis and the Release of the Butterfly
John the Baptist and
The Sound of Music
Morphing De Quincey and Shelley
From Mount Vernon to Portobello Road with a Hangover
The Scampering Champion of the Champagne Campaign
Venezuela and Venus and Venice
Queen Gunhilda and the Gadgets
The Sedge-strewn Stream and Globalisation
The French Revolution in English Words
From Bohemia to California (via Primrose Hill)
Back to Howth Castle and Environs
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
.
(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
?