"Millions of people want to know the origin of the words they use. Word columns in daily newspapers and numerous books attempt to satisfy their curiosity. Word histories are usually digested like pills: the user is interested in getting well, not in the chemistry of the prescribed medication. Those who send letters to the Editor also want a straight answer without bothering about how "editors" come by their knowledge. Therefore, they fail to realize that etymologies are seldom definitive and that the science of etymology is intensely interesting. Perhaps if someone explained to them that, compared to the drama of words, Hamlet is a light farce, they might develop a more informed attitude toward philological research and become students of historical linguistics rather than gullible consumers of journalists' pap."--Anatoly Liberman Word Origins is the only guide to the science and process of etymology for the layperson. This funny, charming, and conversational book not only tells the known origins of hundreds of words, but also shows how their origins were determined. Liberman, an internationally acclaimed etymologist, takes the reader by the hand and explains the many ways that English words can be made, and the many ways in which etymologists try to unearth the origins of words. Part history, part how-to, and completely entertaining, Word Origins invites readers behind the scenes to watch an etymologist at work.

Word Origins ... and How We Know Them: Etymology for Everyone

Reference

Liberman, Anatoly

Foreign Language Study & Reference

Oxford University Press

Written in a funny, charming, and conversational style, Word Origins is the first book to offer a thorough investigation of the history and the science of etymology, making this little-known field accessible to everyone interested in the history of words. Anatoly Liberman, an internationally acclaimed etymologist, takes the reader by the hand and explains the many ways that English words can be made, and the many ways in which etymologists try to unearth the origins of words. Every chapter is packed with dozens of examples of proven word histories, used to illustrate the correct ways to trace the origins of words as well as some of the egregiously bad ways to trace them. He not only tells the known origins of hundreds of words, but also shows how their origins were determined. And along the way, the reader is treated to a wealth of fascinating word facts. Did they once have bells in a belfry? No, the original meaning of belfry was siege tower. Are the words isle and island, raven and ravenous, or pan and pantry related etymologically? No, though they look strikingly similar, these words came to English via different routes. Partly a history, partly a how-to, and completely entertaining, Word Origins invites readers behind the scenes to watch an etymologist at work.

Word Origins And How We Know Them: Etymology for Everyone

Words, Language & Grammar

Lost origins of words revealed. We like to recount that goodbye started out as "god be with you," that whiskey comes from the Gaelic for "water of life," or that avocado originated as the Aztec word for "testicle." But there are many words with origins unknown, disputed, or so buried in old journals that they may as well be lost to the general public. In Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology, eminent etymologist Anatoly Liberman draws on his professional expertise and etymological database to tell the stories of less understood words such as nerd, fake, ain't, hitchhike, trash, curmudgeon, and quiz, as well as puzzling idioms like kick the bucket and pay through the nose. By casting a net so broadly, the book addresses language history, language usage (including grammar), history (both ancient and modern), religion, superstitions, and material culture. Writing in the spirit of adventure through the annals of word origins, Liberman also shows how historical linguists construct etymologies, how to evaluate competing explanations, and how to pursue further research.

Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology

Dictionaries & Thesauruses

Theory and History of Folklore (Theory and History of Literature)

Politics & Social Sciences

Propp, V.

Social Sciences

Manchester University Press

This work introduces renowned linguistics scholar Anatoly Liberman’s comprehensive dictionary and bibliography of the etymology of English words. The English etymological dictionaries published in the past claim to have solved the mysteries of word origins even when those origins have been widely disputed. An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology by contrast, discusses all of the existing derivations of English words and proposes the best one. 
In the inaugural volume, Liberman addresses fifty-five words traditionally dismissed as being of unknown etymology. Some of the entries are among the most commonly used words in English, including man, boy, girl, bird, brain, understand, key, ever, and yet. Others are slang: mooch, nudge, pimp, filch, gawk, and skedaddle. Many, such as beacon, oat, hemlock, ivy, and toad, have existed for centuries, whereas some have appeared more recently, for example, slang, kitty-corner, and Jeep. They are all united by their etymological obscurity. 
This unique resource book discusses the main problems in the methodology of etymological research and contains indexes of subjects, names, and all of the root words. Each entry is a full-fledged article, shedding light for the first time on the source of some of the most widely disputed word origins in the English language.
“Anatoly Liberman is one of the leading scholars in the field of English etymology. Undoubtedly his work will be an indispensable tool for the ongoing revision of the etymological component of the entries in the Oxford English Dictionary.” —Bernhard Diensberg, OED consultant, French etymologies
Anatoly Liberman is professor of Germanic philology at the University of Minnesota. He has published many works, including 16 books, most recently Word Origins . . . and How We Know Them: Etymology for Everyone.

An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology: An Introduction

Univ. of Minnesota Press

Germanic Accentology was first published in 1982. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.
The Scandinavian languages are among the few living Indo-European languages that possess a ramified system of special tones or accents. Such accents are widespread in the languages of Africa and Asia (creating, for example, the singsong character of Chinese and Vietnamese), but in the vast territory occupied by the Indo-European family only the Scandinavian languages, some German dialects, Lithuanian, Latvian, and Serbo- Croatian have similar accetologies. The function and origin of the Scandinavian accents are central problems facing linguists and are the issues that Anatoly Liberman confronts in this book.
Liberman uses the methods of synchronic and diachronic phonology to explore the current status of Scandinavian accentology and to reconstruct its historical development. In the first, synchronic, group of chapters he analyzes the accents and accent-like phenomena in all the modern Scandinavian languages, comparing the literary languages with spoken dialects, and drawing from all of the published descriptions of and theories about Scandinavian prosody. In the final, diachronic, chapter he presents a new hypothesis on the origins of Scandinavian accentology based upon his descriptive material. Throughout, his theoretical approach is that of a functionalist.

Germanic Accentology

Distinguished linguistics scholar Anatoly Liberman set out the frame for this volume in An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology. Here, Liberman's landmark scholarship lay the groundwork for his forthcoming multivolume analytic dictionary of the English language. A Bibliography of English Etymology is a broadly conceptualized reference tool that provides source materials for etymological research. For each word's etymology, there is a bibliographic entry that lists the word origin's primary sources, specifically, where it was first found in use. Featuring the history of more than 13,000 English words, their cognates, and their foreign antonyms, this is a full-fledged compendium of resources indispensable to any scholar of word origins.

A Bibliography of English Etymology: Sources and Word List

Catalogs & Directories

[Vrachevanie dukha: Stikhi i perevody (Russian Edition)

Effect Pub

Henning Andersen: A Glimpse of the Homeland of the Slavs—Ecological and Cultural Change in Prehistory; Jeannine Davis-Kimball: Burial Practices Among the Iranian Sarmatians; Angelique Gulermovich Epstein: Divine Devouring—Further Notes on the Morrigan and the Valkyries; John D. Frauzel: Impersonal Absolutes in Indo-Iranian, Greek, Latin and Baltic and the Origin of the Indo-European Absolute Construction; Gayané Hagopian: The Classical Armenian Term Skndik; Yelena Izbitser: Wheeled Vehicles and the Homeland of the Indo-Europeans; Anatoly Liberman: English Girl under the Asterisked Sky of the Indo-Europeans; Dean A. Miller: Destroyer or Builder and other Bifurcations—Notes on Indo-European Sovereignty; Marianna Nikolaidou: Religious Symbols in Minoan Scripts and Iconography—Elements of Formulaic Expression; Yevgeniy Novitskiy: Semantic Analysis of the Early Metal Period Sculpture of the Northern Black Sea Region; Christopher M. Stevens: The Consonants of German and Germanic.

Proceedings of the 7th UCLA Indo-European Conference, Los Angeles, 1995 (Journal of Indo-European Studies Monograph Series No. 27)

Davis-Kimball, Jeannine

Andersen, Henning

Institute for the Study of Man

Three centuries of English idioms—their unusual origins and unexpected interpretations\nTo pay through the nose. Raining cats and dogs. By hook or by crook. Curry favor. Drink like a fish. Eat crow. We hear such phrases every day, but this book is the first truly all-encompassing etymological guide to both their meanings and origins. Spanning more than three centuries, Take My Word for It is a fascinating, one-of-a-kind window into the surprisingly short history of idioms in English. Widely known for his studies of word origins, Anatoly Liberman explains more than one thousand idioms, both popular and obscure, occurring in both American and British standard English and including many regional expressions. 
The origins, and even the precise meaning, of most idioms are often obscure and lost in history. Based on a critical analysis of countless conjectures, with exact, in-depth references (rare in the literature on the subject), Take My Word for It provides not only a large corpus of idiomatic phrases but also a vast bibliography. Detailed indexes and a thesaurus make the content accessible at a glance, and Liberman’s introduction and conclusion add historical dimensions. The result of decades of research by a leading authority, this book is both instructive and absorbing for scholars and general readers, who won’t find another resource as comparable in scope or based on data even remotely as exhaustive.

Take My Word for It: A Dictionary of English Idioms

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