A Thesaurus of English Word Roots PDF
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A Thesaurus of English Word Roots A Thesaurus of English Word Roots Horace Gerald Danner Foreword by Timothy Brian Noone ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK Published by Rowman & Littlefield 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom Copyright © 2014 by Rowman & Littlefield All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Danner, Horace G. [Thesaurus of word roots of the English language] A thesaurus of English word roots / Horace Gerald Danner ; Foreword by Timothy Brian Noone. pages cm. Previously published as “Thesaurus of word roots of the English language”: Lanham, Md. :y University Press of America, 1992. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4422-3325-6 (cloth : alk. paper) – ISBN 978-1-4422-3326-3 (ebook) 1. English language– Roots–Dictionaries. 2. English language–Etymology–Dictionaries. 3. English language–Synonyms and antonyms. I. Title. PE1580.D36 2014 422.03–dc23 2013049224 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America Dedication To my grandchildren Nathan, Alissa, Margaret Donna, Susan, and Madeline Contents Foreword ix Acknowledgements xi Preface xiii Thesaurus 1 English to Roots Index 975 Works Consulted 989 About the Author 991 Foreword When you read these words you probably do not fully understand what you have in your hands. Were I to say that you have a whole dictionary in your hands, you might find that unremarkable; we often think of thesauri, those treasure-books of words, as mere extensions of dictionaries anyway. But if I were to say that you had a lexicographical library in your hands, you might first wonder at the meaning of 'lexicographical'—you may look it up in this book—and then express a note of incredulity at my claim. Yet that is what you do actually have in your hands: Dr. Danner has compressed into one volume all the knowledge of words and learning regarding their origins to be found in an entire library of foreign language dictionaries as well as related linguistic tools for the study of English developed by historians of the language. This is an altogether singular achievement. To see the extent to which this is the case, let us follow out Dr. Danner's set of organizing principles by considering an example. Take that strange word I used in the previous paragraph: lexicographical. Using the English to Roots index at the back of the volume, you would soon discover that the word has two roots within its structure, roots that will reveal its meaning when combined. The first is 'lex.' Once you look that up, you will learn that it derives from 'legein' in Greek, a verb that means 'to say' and by extension refers to utterances or words. But you will also learn at the entry for that root the entire range of words that use that same root, discovering in the process that the root is behind the Latin word for 'law' as well as a host of English derivatives. The second root of 'lexicographical' is 'graph'. Having arrived by way of the index at this root, you will find that this root means 'writing' and takes it origin from 'graphein', another Greek verb. As a result, you will now see inside, so to speak, the word 'lexicographical' and understand that lexicographers are people who write about words and that the adjectival form must mean: pertaining to writing about words. I cannot overstate how important having an insight into the inner meaning of words is, for you now have a technique for decoding words even when you do not have access to a dictionary, as I do not when writing this on a commuter train coming home from work. Dr. Danner's book allows you not only to build up your passive English vocabulary, resulting in word recognition knowledge, but also gives you the rudiments for developing your active English vocabulary, making it possible to infer the meaning of words with which you are not yet acquainted. Your knowledge can now expand and will do so exponentially as your awareness of the roots in English words and your corresponding ability to decode unfamiliar words grow apace. This is the beginning of a fine mental linguistic library: Enjoy! Timothy B. Noone Ordinary Professor Catholic University of America
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