Dictionary of Word Origins

This is a wonderful book! It is indispensable to students or anyone who reads books that have been written in the past, or for those with a curious nature. The dictionary is in alphabetical order with stories of how each word came into the English language and has evolved over time. For example: Alcohol - Originally, alcohol was a powder, not a liquid. The word comes from Arabic al-kuhul, literally `the kohl'--that is, powdered antimony used as a cosmetic for darkening the eyelids. This was borrowed into English via French or Medieval Latin, and retained this `powder' meaning for some centuries (for instance, `They put between the eyelids and the eye a certain black powder made of a mineral brought from the kingdom of Fez, and called Alcohol,' George Sandys, Travels 1615). But a change was rapidly taking place: from specifically `antimony,' alcohol came to mean any substance obtained by sublimation, and hence `quintessence.' Alcohol of wine was thus the `quintessence of wine,' produced by distillation or rectification, and by the middle of the 18th century alcohol was being used on its own for the intoxicating ingredient in strong liquor. The more precise chemical definition (a compound with a hydroxyl group bound to a hydrocarbon group) developed in the 19th century.

I love this book. If you have a passion for etymology--or even if you don't--you will eat this book up. As a writer, I use it often for research, but sometimes I just sit and read it for pleasure. Well written, comprehensive, and delightful!

I think this book may hold the record for most quickly becoming indispensible to me. It contains concise, single paragraph histories of the backgrounds of 8,000 words in our language. One thing I really enjoy about it is the way it combines presentations of the most common, everyday words with the coolest, most interesting ones. Offhand, one of my favorite words would have to be the word "guitar." Did you know that the word guitar started out as the Greek word "kithara," and came to English by means of two separate routes? On the one hand, it passed directly through Europe, by way of the Roman Empire, becoming "cithara" in Latin and then "citole" in Middle English. On the other hand, it went through North Africa with the Muslims as a "qitar" in Arabic, then into Spanish by way of the Moors as "guitarra," then into French as "guitare," then finally into English as "guitar." (A citole, by the way, for all you non-Chaucer fans out there, was a medieval stringed instrument that we no longer have with us.) That's just one word. There are 7,999 more entries like that, and all of them are amazing. This book is so worth the money it isn't even funny. Two million thumbs up.

Ayto provides "the true historie" of more than 8,000 English-language words in a single volume, one which I consider to be the most useful of the several I own and regularly consult. Each entry is brief and precise. If you have a need and interest, or if you are merely curious about word origins and plan to purchase only one reference source, this is the one.

... because I use it so often. That's right, there are so many fascinating, helpful word origins in this book that due to over-use and laying the book out flat to read it (over breakfast, etc.), it's the first book I actually split in two down the binding. So now I'll need to get another one. I read a few word origins from this book almost daily, it's my favorite word book. These word origins reveal twists, turns and reverses of the human mind, history and culture over the ages. Mr. Ayto doesn't just pick a few of the most interesting words; I like that a wide variety of words -- including mundane -- can be found here. The author is candid (marking with an asterisk) about which pre-literate word origins involve guess work. At the end of entries you'll often find cross-referenced words.