Book review of The Illustrated Etymologicon by Mark Forsyth

For the language geeks of the world, of whose ranks I’m a lifetime member, The Illustrated Etymologicon is a curious journey via time, with its ears and eyes skilled on the way in which life will get translated into phrases.

Author Mark Forsyth first made his identify with a weblog referred to as The Inky Fool, and The Etymologicon adopted, turned a success, and so forth. This new model is gussied up with typography introduced as art- and collage-like illustrations. The group right here is associative, with fart, for instance, main us to peter out, which can come from the French verb peter, to fart. From there we’re on to fizzle out, feisty and even partridge. Want to go deep on the origins of the identify Starbucks? Forsyth will take you all the way in which to the Vikings. It’s all fairly dizzying, and infrequently humorous in a relatively British kind of manner.