Word histories and mysteries: from abracadabra to Zeus PDF
Preview Word histories and mysteries: from abracadabra to Zeus
Word Histories and Mysteries From Abracadabra to Zeus Word Histories and Mysteries From Abracadabra to Zeus From the Editors of the American Heritage ® Dictionaries Houghton Mifflin Company Boston New York Words included in this book that are known to have cur- rent trademark registrations are shown with initial capital and are also identified as trademarks. No investigation has been made of common-law trademark rights in any word, because such investigation is impracticable. The inclusion of any word in this book is not, however, an expression of the Publisher’s opinion as to whether or not it is subject to proprietary rights. Indeed, no word in this book is to be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark. Copyright © 2004 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any informa- tion storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Houghton Mifflin Company unless such copying is expressly permitted by federal copyright law. Address inquiries to Reference Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company, 222 Berkeley Street, Boston, MA 02116. Visit our website: www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com ISBN-13: 978-0-618-45450-1 ISBN-10: 0-618-45450-0 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Word histories and mysteries : from abracadabra to Zeus / from the editors of the American Heritage dictionaries. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0-618-45450-0 1. English language--Etymology--Dictionaries. I. American Heritage dictionary. II. Houghton Mifflin Company. PE1580.W665 2004 422'.03--dc22 2004014798 Manufactured in the United States of America QUM 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Table of Contents Editorial and Production Staff • vii Introduction • ix The Word Histories and Mysteries • 1 Glossary • 333 The Indo-European Family of Languages • 346 Picture Credits • 348 v Editorial and Production Staff Vice President,Publisher of Dictionaries Margery S. Berube Vice President,Executive Editor Vice President,Managing Editor Joseph P. Pickett Christopher Leonesio Project Editor Patrick Taylor Contributing Editors Art and Production Supervisor Michael Adams Margaret Anne Miles Benjamin W. Fortson IV Manufacturing Supervisor Copyeditor James W. Mitchell Ann-Marie Imbornoni Editorial Production Associate Administrative Coordinator Brianne M. Lutfy Kevin McCarthy Text Design Database Production Supervisor Catherine Hawkes, Cat & Mouse Christopher Granniss vii Introduction The Origins of English The roots of English run deep into the past and reach all around the world. Today English is the first language of over 350 million people all over the globe, and the great diversity of English speakers is matched by the great diversity of English words. This diversity has arisen through a variety of historical processes, and in order to illus- trate these processes vividly, this book traces all the twists and turns taken by over four hundred words on their journey into modern English. When we examine the origins of English words, even the words we use everyday, we find that English has drawn its vocabu- lary from a great variety of sources, and readers can discover in these pages a representative sample of these wide-ranging borrow- ings. However, English also has a considerable number of words that have been in continuous use for thousands of years, inheritances from the prehistoric ancestor of English spoken many thousands of years ago, Proto-Indo-European. The Prehistoric Ancestors of English All around us as we speak, we can observe the kinds of linguistic change that have transformed Proto-Indo-European into English. In ix
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