Friday, October 01, 2004
Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins
The Maverick Philosopher asks my opinion of Robert Hendrickson, QPB Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, 2nd edition (New York: Facts on File, 2004), a book which I have criticized previously (here and here). On the whole I find it a delightful book, fun to browse, and chock-full of quirky, off-beat insights into the English language. I highly recommend it to any language lover. I recently discovered in it an amusing synonym for curmudgeon: smellfungus, defined as "a discontented person, a grumbler and fault-finder," a word coined by Laurence Sterne (1713-1768), who spelled it smelfungus.
As with any large book (the Encyclopedia is 822 pages long), there are bound to be errors and misprints. Since I find some of the more serious errors a springboard for blogging, I'll continue to point them out as I detect them.
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As with any large book (the Encyclopedia is 822 pages long), there are bound to be errors and misprints. Since I find some of the more serious errors a springboard for blogging, I'll continue to point them out as I detect them.
