There's an article in today's Daily Mail about Mark Forsyth's book The Entymologicon, which looks at the connections between words. Here are a few from the book and article:
Castor is the Latin word for 'beaver' and castor oil was a substance originally extracted from the glands of a beaver. Bizarre is from the Basque word for beard, bizar. Apparently, Spanish soldiers arrived in remote Pyrenean villages, they appeared strange with their unusual beards. The word serendipity was coined by Horace Walpole, son of the first prime minister, in 1754 after coming across the name the island of Serendip, present-day Sri Lanka. Nazi is from the formerly common Bavarian peasant name Ignatius, and was coined as an insult.
Here's the article.
I think The Etymologicon just made the Christmas list. This would be pricless to have at work even if one of the Daily Mail respondants is skeptical.
Fascinating.
Posted by: John | October 24, 2011 at 11:27 PM
No offense, but if there's a facebook like button, it'll be much easier for me to share.
Posted by: Elliptical reviews | November 30, 2011 at 04:24 AM
Hello
Your website is really cool, I told my brother to take a look at it,
But there is a problem, none of us can see the images, maybe there is a problem with our browser ? I'm using Mozillla Firefox
Best regards,
Bye
Emilie
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