The Etymologicon

One of the many books that I've read this year was a surprise gift from my lovely Aunt. I tore away the packaging, wondering what the mystery parcel could be, and was welcomed with a beautiful, red, hardback book with gold lettering entitled, "The Etymologican, A Circular Stroll Through the Hidden Connections of the English Language". I flipped open the first page and was immediately gripped. It is without a doubt one of the funniest, most engaging and interesting books that I have ever read. You all need to go and pick up a copy now!

amazon.com

As the title suggests, the book, broken up into numerous little segments, explains the meaning behind words, phrases, names and so on. For example did you know that the American national anthem is based on an old English drinking song? Or why Starbucks is called Starbucks? Well you can find it all in Mark Forsyth's fantabulous book. Or... you could just read it in his fabulous blog The Inky Fool... but the book is so pretty!

Stephen Fry
goodreads.com

I've been wanting to blog about this book for a while, not only because it's so brilliant but because it leads into something which fascinates me: Language. Please don't leave me yet I'll try and make it interesting, promise! Being a bit of an English geek/literary nerd I have a real love of language (and yes, even grammar). I studied Latin at school and even though I hated it at the time, it's the subject I look back most on. Last weekend, as you may know from a previous blog, I spent a great deal of time sitting on buses and so to pass the time I downloaded some of Stephen Fry's podcasts - what a God! One that I listened to happened to be about language. In it he launched into a massive diatribe against those "sorry bunch of semi-educated losers" who pedantically correct every grammatical or spelling error or incorrect usage (they'd probably have a field day with that sentence!). His greatest example of course being the "five items or less" aisles that adorn nearly every supermarket*. Now if you know me, and I know Nick will be up in arms at this blog, I correct people a lot. I get satisfaction out of distinguishing your from you're and their from there, but that's different. That's not altering the meaning of a word but simply getting it confused with another word. I mean of course who's to say that in five, ten, maybe fifty years time, there won't be a distinction between it's and its and we'll all be left guessing.

What I'm talking about are words like 'hopefully' whose meaning was begrudgingly changed this week according to the BBC magazine -

Before the change, "hopefully" could only be used to mean "in a hopeful manner". ("Is dinner ready?" she asked hopefully.) Now, it can also take the more modern meaning, "it is hoped". (Hopefully, dinner will be ready soon).

 Shakespeare and Milton made up hundreds of words that are part of our daily discourse so why can't we?! But remember...

*Grammatically speaking it should be "five items or fewer"... just saying!