The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, Second Edition

I have found his book to be very entertaining and informative. So much so thatI've given it three times as gifts to friends.

I don't think that a better description of this volume of English Language source material than the one in "Library Journal" can be found. Their reviewers called it witty and insightful and "useful to the general reader, and especially to the historian and student of language." To this I would add that it is also a great source of trivia to trip up one's spouse or drinking buddies.I can't think of a better way to describe its contents than to give a few examples out of the 7,500 or so entries that I found interesting, or amusing, or both.Being an American, I had never quite understood the difference between a solicitor and a barrister or exactly how these British attorneys related to their American counterparts. Now I do. A solicitor is a type of legal practitioner who does general legal work while a barrister is one who does trial work.Now, for American Baseball fans: Do you know why "K" is the symbol for a strikeout? I didn't either, but now I do. Way back in the dark ages of baseball, when a batter struck out, it was said that he had "struck." Letters were used for scoring then just as they are now, but the letter "S" was already being used for sacrifice, so they assigned "K," the last letter of the word struck, to stand for "a player who missed the ball in three swings."Here's one for our British cousins: "'S - - t' said the Queen." The following has never been proved but it makes a great story. Mark Twain and his good friend, Rudyard Kipling, had a contest to see who could make up the bawdiest and most offensive story, An effort of Kipling's which began with "'S - - t!' said the Queen" was brought to Queen Victoria's attention. She was not amused. This may explain why Kipling was never knighted and never became Poet Laureate.There are at least two names in this encyclopedia for what I'm being in this review; "Smart Aleck" and "Wiseacre." I'm going to risk "getting your dander up" and be a real smart aleck by telling you that you'll have to find your own copy and look these up for yourselves if you want to know more about them. You'll probably have a lot of fun if you do.

Now in an updated and expanded fourth edition, The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins is a massive reference jam-packed with definitions and origins of more than 15,000 words and expressions. From "all gussied up" to "zoot suit", each entry offers plain, no-nonsense information about the history and usage of each phrase (or the best known theories of the phrase's origin). Highly recommended especially for public library reference collections. "Zombie was originally the snake god worshiped in West Indian voodoo ceremonies based upon the worship of the python god in West Africa. Since dead people were said to be brought to life in these ceremonies, such imagined corpses shuffling along half dead and half alive were called zombies. By the 1920s this word naturally became applied to any oafish 'dummy' without much intelligence or spirit. It is also the name of a cocktail that makes one feel like a zombie."

One of the only reference books that can be read from cover to cover for pure reading pleasure. A fine read.