Where did the words bungalow and assassin derive? What did nice mean in the Middle Ages? How were adder, anger, and umpire originally spelt? The answers can be found in this essential companion to any popular dictionary. With over 17,000 entries, this is the most authoritative and comprehensive guide to word origins available in paperback. Based on The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, the principal authority on the origin and development of English words, it contains a wealth of information about our language and its history.

Reviews

C.T. Onions's Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (Oxford, rev. 1969, $45) is the source of this compact version, and for the most part the reductions are carefully chosen, as in eliminating the pronunciations of common words and technical terms. But this work is abridged: e.g., over two former pages, between dickens and dignity, entries for dictaphone, dies non , and dight have been deleted, and these deletions are representative. Secondary information has also been cut from individual entries. The result is a handy and compact desktop reference book, well printed and bound as expected from the Clarendon Press. However, both the original, and Ernest Klein's Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Lanaguage (Elsevier, 1971, $85) are in print, and larger libraries should have them as well. Stephen H. Cape, Indiana Univ. Lib., Bloomington

"A model of its kind--all that anyone other than a specialist needs to know about words."--Daily Telegraph