A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language

I have been enjoying this book ever since I came across it earlier this year. It was first published in 1882, but the edition Ι have says 1963, although I assume the Rev. Walter W Skeat was not around to see it! It was very useful during my Anglo-Saxon course, where word origin was a constant discussion, and now that I know a little classical Greek – at least enough to decode the words and work out if it’s a noun or verb – I can read the derivations Skeat doesn’t bother to translate.

It has been fascinating to discover that most of our words come from Anglo-Saxon rather than Latin or Greek as I had once assumed. It’s also interesting to find out how many words come from Gothic, Old Irish, or other unusual sources. Because it’s so old, there are a fair few words I have never heard of before, and a few words missing that we use today. For example, under kidnap, it states that kid was Tudor slang for child, and that’s where the phrase originates. Evidently it wasn’t slang for kid at the time or in the part of the world that Skeat was writing.

It would be interesting to compare this dictionary with a more modern source – I assume there’d be quite a few differences since 1882 and a fair few advances in the field of etymology! Still, this version has the benefit of Skeat’s opinion every so often – “the spelling of this is absurd” or “there are many Englishmen who are accustomed to derive English, of all things, from Modern High German!” It’s fun to be able to agree with how ridiculous that is, after reading this dictionary.