Etymology is not to be confused with entomology. The latter deals with insects, although so too may the former, but in a completely different way. “For example, the origin of the word bug has bothered (one might even say bugged) researchers for decades” (6). However, both etymology and entomology take us back to ancient Greece.
Such is the untiringly jovial and hilarious tone of this fascinating book. Presented in eighteen chapters of varying lengths, typically running from ten to twenty pages each, it is written with a verve rarely come across in introductory books. Liberman's aim is to captivate the uninitiated and keep them spellbound by the piquant delights of this otherwise arid landscape. He does this by, among other things, playing with words all the time and, in so doing, proving how the study of words and the way they work and evolve over time can be a source of great fun in and of itself. Following the opening chapter, where Liberman offers the reader an idea of what etymology is all about, Ch. 2 explains the fundamental distinction between words and things—the principle that underlies all theories of representation. This is followed by seven chapters dealing with different principles of word formation: “Sound imitative words,” “Sound symbolism,” “Folk etymology,” “Words based on reduplication,” “Infixation,” “Disguised compounds,” and “Suffixes, prefixes, misdivision and blends.”
Chs. 10 and 11 both deal with names of celebrities, but in different ways. Whereas the former deals with famous persons who, so to speak, lent their names to products named after them (such as macintosh—or, as Liberman reminds us, mackintosh, as it is often “misspelled”—meaning a raincoat, before it began to refer, thanks to a different person with the same name, to a brand of computer, vaguely reminiscent, Liberman says, of Big Mac, named after someone totally unrelated to either), the latter discusses coinages by famous people (among them, Jonathan Swift's Lilliputian). Ch. 12, “Borrowed words,” provides interesting cases of migratory words (Wanderwörter, in German) that strike countries across the world, such as typhoon (“provides a Chinese connection,” p. 141)—be it the phenomenon itself or the lexeme, with possible influences from Italian, Greek, Arabic, Portuguese, and so forth, before finding its place in English. The last five chapters of the book switch gears from the casual, meandering, and anecdotal style of the previous chapters and take on such meatier issues as the methods of etymology (Ch. 13), sound laws (Ch. 14), and the state of English etymology (Ch. 17). Ch. 18 is mostly valedictory.
On the whole, this book is highly user-friendly and offers the reader a pleasant read. It is also very informative and full of interesting tidbits about the origin of words that are sure to enliven an after-dinner conversation.
