Word Stems: A Dictionary

This is a fun book to read for about five minutes every day to increase your vocabulary. I know these words, but I never connected them: cent, century, centennial, centenary, centurion, centigrade, centipede, centuple, per cent from the Latin centum.

This books is not only one of the best guides for the study of the etymology of languages, but also shows a lot of proof of the Grimm's Law's defficiency to explain the mechanism in the shift of sound in the Indo-European languages.For instance, the Grimm's Law failed to explain the shift of from Latin word , from Latin , from Latin , all of which are obviously changes between consonant and . Moreover, what is more important , the Grimm's Law did not explain the shift between and as appeared in and Latin , the shift between and as appeared in and Latin .

Linguists call roots "segmental morphemes", but we know them as prefixes, suffixes, and elements. Kennedy's book provides a good reference regarding the roots of the 8,000 or so "standard vocabulary". The secret in making these kinds of reference books work is to provide cross references that encourage the reader to explore and discover gems that they weren't looking for (something akin to "surfing" the book). The format of Kennedy's book, and the clarity of its presentation masterfully achieves this objective. My only gripe with this book is that it stops at the obvious - mainly the Latin or Greek source of the root. But we know that the words and their roots go much deeper into the past, to their Proto-Indo European source. If this book had gone that far back, it would have been the indispensible standard. Still, its a very good book and strongly recommended for the wordsmith.

This is a useful book, especially for English teachers and really anyone interested in the etymological history of basic word roots in the English language. Sure we all know what prefixes like "anti" and "post" mean, or suffixes like "ship" or "dom," but what about common word roots like "cumb," as in "incumbent" or "succumb," or "sider," as in "consider" or "sidereal"? This book is not for everyone, but if you are interested in strengthening your vocabulary or just browsing the origins of words while taking a lengthy visit to the latrine, this is the book for you.