Wanderings Among Words

This book is a fascinating study of the history and derivation of many familiar English words. Amongst other things, it deals with some of the primitive elements in our speech which take us back to prehistoric times; with the debt our language owes to Greece and Rome; with words we have inherited from the life and customs of the Middle Ages; and with the odd connections that often exist between words that hardly look as if they were related at all. Contents: primitive; Greece and Rome; middle ages; obsolete words and meanings; trade and commerce; connections and developments; metaphors; oddities.