If you think that a word derives from an acronym, then you're probably wrong. That's the most important lesson I learned from this useful little book, although in many cases the true derivation for some of the sayings and expressions we use today have never been found. Still, this is an interesting adventure in language. ( )

Entertaining stuff, fun little book of etymology. It's a lovely topic that rarely fails being interesting.

The book could use more explanations, but it's certainly better to debunk the false explanations and then say the truth is unknown than to accept the silliness. Quinion does a great job debunking silly folk etymologies.

Excellent material for killing time in small pieces, reading few chapters at a time. ( )

I highly recommend this book.

Michael Quinion has a website and weekly email newsletter which I also recommend, www.worldwidewords.org

Quinion is especially good at de-bunking folk etymology and a particular bete noir of his is alleged acronyms, there are virtually no known acronyms that pre-date the 1940's and yet people believe that Posh stands for Port Out Starboard Home, or that Spud is from Society for the Prevention of Unwholesome Diet and as for Fornication Under Consent of the King - least said the better!

Some of the real etymology is fascinating to anyone who loves words, and much is surprising. For example "Phat", currently popular hip-hop slang, has been around with the same meaning since at least 1963. Yonks (meaning for ages) appeared from nowhere in the 1960's amongst the young in the UK and in Australia only - I remember it as a favourite word to annoy adults with - they wouldn't let you use it in Scrabble or Lexicon because it wasn't a real word!

There is a good mix of words and phrases from the ancient to the modern - the origins of many of which remain a mystery but theories are explored and ranked by probability. The advent of electronic text databases, of old publications, has pushed back the known origins of many words and Quinion specialises in finding earliest known occurrences.

From Akimbo to Yonks, via Cabal (not an acronym!), Joystick, Shyster and Toerag it's the perfect pick up and put down book, except that I couldn't put it down! ( )