Book review
by Elizabeth Potter

Word Origins:
The Hidden Histories of English
Words from A to Z

Etymology, not to be confused with entomology (the study of insects, from the Greek éntomon meaning “insect”) is one of the aspects of language that people find most fascinating. Just as many people like to find out where they and their families came from, so we are intrigued by the origins of the words we use every day. Most dictionaries aimed at native speakers give some etymologies at the ends of entries, but Word Origins is much more than just a dictionary of word origins. The aim of the book, in the words of its author, John Ayto, is:

...to uncover the often surprising connections between elements of the English lexicon that have become obscured by centuries of language change.

This means that the little essays that make up this scholarly and fascinating work link together such apparently disparate and distant items as bacteria and imbecile (both derived ultimately from the Latin baculum meaning “stick”) or bishop and spy (from the Greek skopein, “look”). A typical entry gives the date of the word’s first recorded use in English, its origin and development and, where appropriate, a list of words that are etymologically linked to it. Thus we learn that the first recorded use of the word dictionary was in the 16th century; that it was coined from medieval Latin, probably in the 13th century; and that it derives ultimately from the Latin dictio meaning “saying”. It is related to a varied group of words that includes addict, condition, index and judge.

Not content with tracing the origins of English words back to their roots in languages as diverse as Sanskrit, Old French and Middle High German, Ayto goes further and gives the possible Indo-European or Common Germanic roots of hundreds of words we still use today. Thus chicken is thought to come from a Common German word that has been reconstructed as *kiuk?nam, while glue is believed to derive from the Indo-European *gloi-, *glei-, *gli- meaning “stick” (the asterix indicates a postulated rather than an actual word form). At the back of the book are half a dozen word family trees which illustrate in graphic form the developments of families of words such as water and know.

This is the second edition of a book first published in 1990; some entries have been removed and about one hundred new ones added. Others have been revised in the light of new knowledge. The 8000 or so entries range from such basics of the English language as and and but, be and have to exotic rarities such as heliotrope and grundyism. Ayto even gives the possible etymology of JRR Tolkien’s invented hobbit (Tolkien was of course a distinguished language scholar who took great care to give credible origins to his linguistic inventions). He also demolishes such enduring folk etymologies as that for posh, wrongly believed by many to derive from the phrase “port out, starboard home”, and kangaroo: not, as has been suggested, the reply “I don’t know” to the question “What is that?” but rather an adaptation of the name for one type of kangaroo in one of the Aboriginal languages of New South Wales.

Word Origins: The Hidden Histories of English Words from A to Z
by John Ayto
A & C Black
2nd edition, 2005
ISBN 0713674989