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

✍ Scribed by Forsyth, Mark

• Book ID: 107557148
• Publisher: Penguin
• Year: 2011
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 175 KB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN-13: 9781848313194

✦ Synopsis

Do you know why…

…a mortgage is literally a death pledge? …why guns have girls’ names? …why salt is related to soldier?

You’re about to find out…

The Etymologicon (e-t?-‘mä-lä-ji-kän) is:

*Witty (wi-te): Full of clever humor

*Erudite (er-?-dit): Showing knowledge

*Ribald (ri-b?ld): Crude, offensive

The Etymologicon is a completely unauthorized guide to the strange underpinnings of the English language. It explains: how you get from “gruntled” to “disgruntled”; why you are absolutely right to believe that your meager salary barely covers “money for salt”; how the biggest chain of coffee shops in the world (hint: Seattle) connects to whaling in Nantucket; and what precisely the Rolling Stones have to do with gardening.

Review

“The stocking filler of the season...how else to describe a book that explains the connection between Dom Perignon and Mein Kampf.”--_The Observer
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“Crikey...this is addictive!”--_The Times
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“Mark Forsyth is clearly a man who knows his onions.”--Daily Telegraph

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. He is the creator of The Inky Fool, a blog about words, phrases, grammar, rhetoric, and prose.