Customer Reviews

Concise Dictionary of English Etymology (Wordsworth Reference) (Wordsworth Collection)

5 star:		(4)
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I carry this book around in my car, and have the unabridged in my office. They are incredibly useful source of insight - listen to the words people emphasize or repeat, then look them up here for "the rest of the story". The best of many etymological dictionaries out there for this use.

If you love or like James Joyce, you'll love this book. It was his favorite book. It is a benefit to have this book when reading _Ulysses_ or _Finnegans Wake_. And for any poet in love with language, this book is vital.

This won't be a long review. This book is not for everyone. It is for anyone who finds the roots and origins of language interesting. If you write you could find tremendous value in exploring word origination, and how words have evolved and changed throughout time. Outside of being interested in this type of reference material, I don't know why you'd purchase it. I do find word origins very interesting, therefore I rate this book very highly for it's process and depth of information.

This book was the vade mecum of Stephen Daedalus--as well as many non-fictional others in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. True, there's no entry for "tundish," but the book's otherwise an excellent and seemingly accurate source of linguistic enlightenment. It deserves nothing less than permanent placement on the shelf next to one's Strunk and White, Fowler, Partridge, Otto Jesperson, and Josefa Heifetz Byrne.