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The Etymologicon
- A Circular Stroll Through the Hidden Connections of the English Language
- Narrated by: Don Hagen
- Length: 7 hrs and 1 min
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Publisher's summary
Do you know why…
a mortgage is literally a death pledge? …why guns have girls’ names? …why salt is related to soldier?
You’re about to find out…The Etymologicon (e-t?-‘mä-lä-ji-kän) is:
*Witty (wi-te\): Full of clever humor
*Erudite (er-?-dit): Showing knowledge
*Ribald (ri-b?ld): Crude, offensive
The Etymologicon is a completely unauthorized guide to the strange underpinnings of the English language. It explains: How you get from “gruntled” to “disgruntled”; why you are absolutely right to believe that your meager salary barely covers “money for salt”; how the biggest chain of coffee shops in the world (hint: Seattle) connects to whaling in Nantucket; and what precisely the Rolling Stones have to do with gardening.
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In this unique new history of the world's most ubiquitous language, linguistics expert David Crystal draws on words that best illustrate the huge variety of sources, influences, and events that have helped to shape our vernacular since the first definitively English word was written down in the fifth century ("roe", in case you are wondering). Featuring Latinate and Celtic words, weasel words and nonce-words, ancient words ("loaf") to cutting edge ("twittersphere") and spanning the indispensable words that shape our tongue ("and", "what") to the more fanciful ("fopdoodle"), Crystal takes us along the winding byways of language.
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Random but entertaining
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The Mother Tongue
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- Narrated by: Stephen McLaughlin
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
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With dazzling wit and astonishing insight, Bill Bryson - the acclaimed author of The Lost Continent - brilliantly explores the remarkable history, eccentricities, resilience, and sheer fun of the English language. From the first descent of the larynx into the throat (why you can talk but your dog can't) to the fine lost art of swearing, Bryson tells the fascinating, often uproarious story of an inadequate, second-rate tongue of peasants that developed into one of the world's largest growth industries.
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More satire than history
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By: Bill Bryson
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The Colour of Magic
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- Narrated by: Colin Morgan, Peter Serafinowicz, Bill Nighy
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Somewhere on the frontier between thought and reality exists the Discworld, a parallel time and place that might sound and smell very much like our own, but which looks completely different. Particularly as it’s carried though space on the back of a giant turtle (sex unknown). It plays by different rules. But then, some things are the same everywhere. The Disc’s very existence is about to be threatened by a strange new blight: the world’s first tourist, upon whose survival rests the peace and prosperity of the land.
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TERRIBLE Narration!
- By Kayla I on 07-08-22
By: Terry Pratchett
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The Edge of the World
- A Cultural History of the North Sea and the Transformation of Europe
- By: Michael Pye
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 15 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Saints and spies, pirates and philosophers, artists and intellectuals: They all crisscrossed the grey North Sea in the so-called "dark ages", the years between the fall of the Roman Empire and the beginning of Europe's mastery over the oceans. Now the critically acclaimed Michael Pye reveals the cultural transformation sparked by those men and women: the ideas, technology, science, law, and moral codes that helped create our modern world.
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Super enjoyable
- By beakt on 10-01-19
By: Michael Pye
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- Narrated by: Alex Jennings
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This is one of the defining novels of English writer Julian Barnes. An entertaining melange of stories starting with a contemporary account of the launch of Noah's Ark takes us into unexpected areas of human foibles, activities, and tendencies.
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Not what I Expected
- By Mark on 02-20-08
By: Julian Barnes
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Foucault's Pendulum
- By: Umberto Eco
- Narrated by: Tim Curry
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One Colonel Ardenti, who has unnaturally black, brilliantined hair, a carefully groomed mustache, wears maroon socks, and who once served in the Foreign Legion, starts it all. He tells three Milan book editors that he has discovered a coded message about a Templar Plan, centuries old and involving Stonehenge, a plan to tap a mystic source of power far greater than atomic energy.
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too much missing
- By Kenneth on 01-29-07
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The Ancient Guide to Modern Life
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It's time for us to re-examine the past. Our lives are infinitely richer if we take the time to look at what the Greeks and Romans have given us in politics and law, religion and philosophy and education, and to learn how people really lived in Athens, Rome, Sparta, and Alexandria. This is a book with a serious point to make, but the author isn't simply a classicist but a comedian and broadcaster who has made television and radio documentaries about humour, education, and Dorothy Parker.
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Brilliant book; new recording so much better
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By: Natalie Haynes
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The Possessed
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In The Possessed we watch Elif Batuman investigate a possible murder at Tolstoy's ancestral estate. We go with her to Stanford, Switzerland, and St. Petersburg; retrace Pushkin's wanderings in the Caucasus; learn why Old Uzbek has 100 different words for crying; and see an 18th-century ice palace reconstructed on the Neva. Love and the novel, the individual in history, the existential plight of the graduate student: all find their places in The Possessed.
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Dear Russian Literary Diary...
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By: Elif Batuman
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Printer's Error
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Since the Gutenberg Bible first went on sale in 1455, printing has been viewed as one of the highest achievements of human innovation. But the march of progress hasn't been smooth; downright bizarre is more like it. Printer's Error chronicles some of the strangest and most humorous episodes in the history of Western printing. Take, for example, the Gutenberg Bible. While the book is regarded as the first printed work in the Western world, Gutenberg's name doesn't appear anywhere on it.
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Porn for Ye Old Bibliophiles
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By: Rebecca Romney, and others
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British History for Dummies
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Putting history into a perspective, this is an engaging, entertaining and educational trip through time, packing in equal parts fun and facts. Recently updated, British History For Dummies introduces listeners to recent events, including British actions in Afghanistan, and David Cameron's formation of Britain's first coalition Cabinet since World War II. But don't worry - British History For Dummies doesn't skimp on the old stuff! It's a riotous, irreverent account of the people and events that have shaped Britain.
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historical and punnie
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The Kingdom of Speech
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Tom Wolfe, whose legend began in journalism, takes us on an eye-opening journey that is sure to arouse widespread debate. The Kingdom of Speech is a captivating, paradigm-shifting argument that speech - not evolution - is responsible for humanity's complex societies and achievements.
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Takedown of a pseudointellectual bully!
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Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue
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A survey of the quirks and quandaries of the English language, focusing on our strange and wonderful grammar. Why do we say "I am reading a catalog" instead of "I read a catalog"? Why do we say "do" at all? Is the way we speak a reflection of our cultural values? Delving into these provocative topics and more, Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue distills hundreds of years of fascinating lore into one lively history.
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Great for casual linguists
- By Bertie on 01-11-10
By: John McWhorter
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What listeners say about The Etymologicon
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- James
- 01-05-16
Maddening! Does not work as an audiobook!
I imagine this as the kind of book I'd like to have in the bathroom. Short entries on the origins of words. And I wanted to see the words. See how they are put together. Pay attention to their spelling. Their prefixes. Their suffixes. So much of etymology depends on this. Therefore, it just doesn't work as an audiobook. And while this is a minor point, the author is clearly British. You can tell by many of his references and his overall sense of humor. So why not have a British narrator? There were interesting entries, but as a book (especially an audiobook ) it drove me up the wall.
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- Dubi
- 12-21-15
Why settle for the whole nine yards...
... when everyone knows it takes ten yards to make a first down?
Did you know the word oxymoron is itself an oxymoron? That turkeys are indeed named after the country Turkey (because they were mistaken for Guinea fowl, who do not actually come from Guinea)? That a rolling stone is really a gardening tool that must be kept free of moss (something Bob Dylan and Mick Jagger must no have known)? That feisty came to mean combative because old ladies blamed their flatulence on their lapdogs? That the fierce battlefield tank was so named by Winston Churchill because its original name was too close to a toilet?
Well, if you love words, if you love the English language in all of its robust idiosyncratic glory, if you love to have fun with language, if you want to impress your next cocktail party, win at Trivial Pursuit, or get some extra points when you go on Jeopardy, you'll love Mark Forsyth's answers to these and many other etymological curiosities.
Just to be clear, this Etymologicon is not interested in classroom word roots, nothing as mundane as basic Latin or Greek sources of common words. No, this is how some unusual words or phrases came into being, how some common words evolved from strange roots, and how so many of them are remarkably and improbably interconnected.
Among my favorites in the latter category are contemporary technologies or brand names emerging from unlikely sources -- how one 11th century Danish queen and her consort gave us the word gun and the brand name Bluetooth, how an anonymous Viking in olde England led to the brand name Starbucks, how bugs came to be in computer software (not to mention beds), how Henry the VIII's oversize codpiece still resides on every computer keyboard not once but twice.
What makes it work is the humorous delivery. Some reviewers found the humor not to their liking. I found it an appropriate vehicle for making this book more lively than the kind of dry scholarly material you might expect. The author is no Monty Python (whom he references), some of his punch lines are groaners, but most of his stories are absolutely fascinating.
But sadly, he has no explanation for the whole nine yards (he does not even attempt one), as it remains one of the mysteries of the American idiom, a term for which there is no known etymology.
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42 people found this helpful
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- AmazonCustomer
- 12-04-14
One of my all time favorite books.
Would you listen to The Etymologicon again? Why?
I listen to this book over and over as one would do with a favorite song. I love words, and the fabric this book weaves is fantastic.
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34 people found this helpful
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- The Book Hound
- 07-15-15
The Perfect Book for a Word Nerd!!
I loved this book! ...every nerdy word!! I've always been fascinated by our language and how it came to be, and this book answered so many of my questions. Who would have ever thought the word (office) "pool" originated with the French word for "chicken?" Now I know along with the answers to how a hundred others words came to be!
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26 people found this helpful
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- Gillian
- 12-14-15
Talking Turkey: Learn Where THAT Comes From...
Where are your hands when you swear? Did you know "gonads" flows into the "Testaments" both Old and New as testifying is based on "testes"?
Seriously.
This is a really, really fun book, but Forsyth isn't kidding when he says it's "A CIRCULAR Stroll." Sometimes it's so circular you forget where you started because where you end up is entirely different. Still, it's a damned fun ride getting there if you're even remotely curious about words.
Hell, not even. It's just funnier 'n all get out.
How about: The partridge gets its name from the fart because it sounds like farting when it flies (or: a "clapping of the buttocks!")
A lengthy section on how to make sheepskin paper, how in the end, after all is said and done, we're left with the shape and size that the kindle is forced to mimic 'cause we're just so damned used to it (ol' Gutenberg used it after all. Well, not the kindle size...?)
After doing a lively business of selling seashells and trinkets, Shell decided to, oh, I dunno, dabble in, petroleum.
This is an enjoyable and lively listen that really makes you think.
Don't expect to zone out. DO expect to laugh
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25 people found this helpful
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- bookouri
- 01-07-16
A fun book in small doses
Any additional comments?
I should have really enjoyed this book. I have always been fascinated by words and languages and this book has that. However, I did not enjoy the presentation of the materials the way this book was written. The book is presented as a kind of "stream of consciousness." It is a rapid fire "flit" and "flutter" roller coaster ride from word to word to word. I would have enjoyed it much more if it had been more organized, and the author had spent more time in discussion of things in more depth rather than blasting through so much so quickly. For me, this is the kind of book I would sit down with on a day when I don't want to put a lot of thought into anything but just want something fun going on in the background. This is a good book for a 15 minute break, but I could not set out on a long drive and listen to this one from start to finish.
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21 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 12-19-15
Fun
Very clever. The book is disjointed, intentionally so, not being chronological or broken down by source language, yet is entertaining.
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16 people found this helpful
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- sans
- 09-17-15
Funny
Interesting book- the author does a good job of entertaining the reader. Very funny! Will try another of his books.
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14 people found this helpful
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- khaledalyami001
- 04-26-15
great and interesting read that keeps you engaged
this is one of the best books i have ever listened to as it is very informative and full with linguistic knowledge ..
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14 people found this helpful
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- Jonathan Love
- 06-02-16
Cleverly Intertwined History of Modern Parlance
I can't believe how much fun this book was. Admittedly, I'm a word geek myself and thoroughly enjoy expanding my personal lexicon, but Mark's database of vernacular history embarrasses my grandest expectations of personal knowledge.
Although one might surmise that the subject is dry, the author presents a digestible amount of history on each example and then quickly segues to another; he also seems to be an armature comedian which makes the anecdotes fun.
I listened to this book in one sitting at three times speed while returning from a family vacation. The narrator is excellent and brings the author's personality to life. I gave a four-star overall rating to this book only because I feel I missed some of the finer nuances and innuendos by listening rather than reading this book. I'm going to buy the kindle companion so I can read through it too. But, the audible version is absolutely fantastic and I highly recommend this book to anyone with even an inkling of interest in knowing the etymology of our modern language.
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9 people found this helpful