Devious Derivations: Popular Misconceptions -- And More Than 1,000 True Origins of Common Words and P hrases - Hardcover

Rawson, Hugh

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0517580667 ISBN 13: 9780517580660

Publisher: Crown, 1993

Synopsis

In this marvelously entertaining book, word maven Hugh Rawson rounds up 1,000 words and phrases whose origins are not what you might expect. Some wiseacre (the word has nothing to do with land measure) may have told you that a tip is given to a waiter "to insure promptness," or that S.O.S. stands for "Save Our Ship," or that hooker is a tribute to the character of Joseph Hooker, the Civil War general. Like hundreds of popular etymologies, these oft-repeated accounts are just too good to be true. Now Mr. Rawson punctures the myths, gives the real derivations, and along the way provides many insights into how language works.
From the Trade Paperback edition.

About this title

About the Author:

Hugh Rawson is the author of Wicked Words and A Dictionary of Euphemisms and Other Doubletalk. He is a member of The Authors Guild, and is Director of Penguin Reference Books.
From the Trade Paperback edition.

From Library Journal:

If William Safire and David Letterman ever collaborate on a book about words, this could be their model. Beginning with adulteress (erroneously attributed to an au pair who called grown men "adults" and grown women "adulteresses") and ending with zip (which has apparently always meant absolutely nothing), Rawson ( Wicked Words , Crown, 1989, among others) lists the derivations of over 1000 words. Although funny, the work has a more scholarly premise, namely, that these mistaken ideas tell us something of how people thought. Yet a collection of meanings cannot alone prove that point; the reader is left to wonder why the word adulteress would be attributed to an uneducated au pair. It may be interesting to know that a ten-gallon hat comes from the Spanish sombrero galon (hat with braid decoration), but for the most part the book is only of specialized use. Recommended for libraries with large collections in etymology.
- Neal Wyatt, Randolph-Macon Coll. Lib., Ashland, Va.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Crown
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0517580667
• ISBN 13: 9780517580660
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 245