Word Histories and Mysteries: From Abracadabra to Zeus (Paperback)

by Editors Of American Heritage Dictionaries (Author)

No customer reviews yet. Be the first.

List Price:	CDN$ 17.95
Price:	CDN$ 14.36 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over CDN$ 39. Details
You Save:	CDN$ 3.59 (20%)
	o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

Usually ships within 11 to 14 days.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.ca. Gift-wrap available.

5 new from CDN$ 14.35 7 used from CDN$ 6.48

Looking for Textbooks? Save up to 37% on New--and up to 90% on Used
Hit the books in Amazon.ca's Textbook Store and save up to 37% on over 100,000 new textbooks shipped from and sold by Amazon.ca. For even bigger savings, get up to 90% off the list price of thousands of used listings. Learn more.

› See more product promotions

Frequently Bought Together

Product Details

Paperback: 368 pages
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin (Oct 1 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0618454500
ISBN-13: 978-0618454501
Product Dimensions: 20.6 x 14 x 2 cm
Shipping Weight: 409 g
Average Customer Review: No customer reviews yet. Be the first.
Amazon.ca Sales Rank: #384,394 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
Popular in this category:
#94 in Books > Nonfiction > Education > Reference > Words & Language > Etymology

Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Product Description

From Publishers Weekly

English-speakers, especially Americans, are sometimes criticized because so many speak only one language, but in truth, English is a tongue composed of many others. Probably no one knows this better than those for whom etymology is their livelihood, such as these dictionary editors, and they draw on their collective experience of hunting down word origins, whether historical or linguistic, to produce this entertaining volume. Even those who aren’t wordy types may wonder where words like "namby-pamby," "milquetoast" and "hamburger" came from, and the explanations don’t disappoint: poet Henry Carey first coined the term "namby-pamby" to make fun of 18th-century poet Ambrose Philips ("amby" standing for Ambrose); "milquetoast" derives from an English comic strip depicting a timid, retiring man named after a bland food; and "hamburger" comes from "a form of pounded beef called Hamburg steak" that people ate in (where else?) Hamburg, Germany. The brief introductory pages of general language history are somewhat dry, but the tone elsewhere is conversational and rarely technical. Some of the entries have straightforward histories that make one question their inclusion ("asparagus" and "iconoclast" are inherited from Latin and Greek respectively), or are hard to even really consider English (like "ciao" and "maharajah"), but often even then the editors include historical tidbits that add interest. Lovers of language, history and literature should appreciate this book, which is much easier to read and more intriguing than the etymological notes found in a regular dictionary.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Inside This Book (Learn More)

Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover