From Publishers Weekly
"Animals lurk everywhere in our language," declares Barnette, the author of two previous books for word lovers, A Garden of Words and Ladyfingers and Nun’s Tummies. From origins that are immediately apparent (grubby refers to grubs, and lousy to lice), to others that might take a little thought (burrito means little donkey, vermicelli translates as little worms), all the way to influences only an etymologist would know (bombastic comes from the Old French bombace, meaning soft padding, which in turn came from bómbyx, the ancient Greek word for silkworm), Barnette offers a sprightly compendium of the animal kingdom’s impact on the king’s English. "There’s a little snake coiled inside the word rankle," "a ‘porker’ in porcelain" and "a pair of oxen trudging round and round, grinding grain for all eternity" in halo, she writes, and, unsurprisingly, "an oversize insect skittering about inside the word lobster." Arranged alphabetically, the 300-plus entries make for good browsing, and readers with a penchant for odd and underused words, such as myrmidon (an unprincipled lackey) and musteline (resembling a weasel) will find them aplenty here.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Booklist
According to Barnette, it's a jungle out there in the dog-eat-dog world of etymology. In this zoological tour of the beastly backgrounds behind common phrases such as swan song and rare words such as snollygoster, Barnette sheds new light on both everyday and esoteric language. Whether their roots can be traced back as far as ancient Greece or only to contemporary American slang, there's a bevy of words that owe their origin to our four-footed and fine-feathered friends. Some make perfect sense, such as lousy, an infestation of lice that is, of course, a perfectly lousy thing to endure. Others are more obscure, such as comedy, which harkens back to the Roman word for the distinctly unamusing maggot. Still other examples will forever alter the way one looks at things. Diners might be far less willing to slather butter on their toast if it were instead referred to in its original Greek as cow cheese. Barnette's etymological sleuthing, itself a word of animal derivation, is as educational as it is engrossing. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
