In this quirky and humorous volume, Graeme Donald explores the fascinating links and curious connections between words. While at first these word pairs may appear to have very little in common, owing to years of linguistic shift, their origins can be traced back to the same root.In exploring these etymological twins, Words of a Feather reveals the oddities of the English language and the fascinating stories that have made our vocabulary so rich.The perfect gift for language lovers and history buffs alike, this beautiful book contains over 200 word pairs with a common ancestry.Is there any PRESTIGE in a STRAITJACKET? When does a CLIQUE become a CLICHÉ? And what has MORRIS DANCING to do with MAURITANIA? In this witty volume, Graeme Donald explores the intriguing links between words with a common origin. Did you know, for example that your attic is named after the Greek capital, or that a flamingo doing flamenco would be the height of vulgarity?Through humorous story-telling, Words of a Feather explores the connections between many other pairings, including:Albatross and AlcatrazBatman and BastardExplode and ApplaudParrot and WigRhubarb and BarbarianSardine and SardonicVillage and VillainYoga and Conjugal

The attractive illustrated package makes this a perfect gift book. Word origin books are perennially popular, and this charming volume is a unique twist on the genre. It is ideal for armchair wordsmiths and fans of William Safire.

A curious and amusing sampler of bizarre word origins details the origin, evolution, and current state of selected words whose meanings through the centuries have changed dramatically.

Unlike most etymology textbooks, this one presents the words studied in the context of the ideas in which the words functioned. Instead of studying endless lists of word roots, suffixes, and prefixes in isolation, the words are enlivened by their social, literary, and cultural media. Features: Chapters on Mythology, Medicine, Politics and Law, Commerce and Economics, Philosophy and Psychology, History Introduction to word building Exercises throughout Illustrations of ancient artifacts Clever cartoons on word origins Glossary of English words and phrases.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.