I have been on a nonfiction kick, but I wanted something fairly light-hearted and fun for my flight. I picked up a used copy from my local independent bookstore and threw it in the carry-on for my flight. I saw this pop up in my Goodreads feed from one of my friends and thought it sounded interesting. He spends some time taking apart words and phrases that have acquired histories, which upon closer look are more myth than fact. Only, that's not entirely accurate as Wilton shows in "Word Myths". The missing element was any sense of joy in the language on the author's part.ĭid you hear the one about "Ring around the Rosie"? How it's about the Black Plague. No matter how hard the author tries, by about the third chapter, the impression that one is being lectured to by a smug know-it-all is impossible to dispel.Ī potentially useful reference, this book was no fun to read. With the benefit of hindsight, the presence of the word "debunking" in the book's title should have been a warning. * Translations: chevy nova, jelly donuts, biting the wax tadpole, kangaroo, gringo * Political correctness: picnic, jimmies, indian giver, squaw, gay, faggot, handicap * Vulgar stuff: hookers, harlots, condoms, crappers, pumpernickel * False nautical etymologies (CANOE - the conspiracy to attribute nautical origins to everything) * Debunking the big boys: ring around the rosie, OK, the whole nine yards, rule of thumb, hot dog, windy city, eskimo words for snow, elizabethan english in the appalachians The scholarship seems solid, but the presentation is surprisingly dull. It's the best of both worlds: not only do you learn the many wrong stories behind these words, you also learn why and how they are created-and what the real story is. Word Myths corrects long-held and far-flung examples of wrong etymologies, without taking the fun out of etymology itself. Chapters separate misetymologies by kind, including The Perils of Political Correctness (picnics have nothing to do with lynchings), Posh, Phat Pommies (the problems of bacronyming-the desire to make every word into an acronym), and CANOE (which stands for the Conspiracy to Attribute Nautical Origins to Everything). What makes us cling to these stories, when the truth behind these words and phrases is available, for the most part, at any library or on the Internet?Īrranged by chapters, this book avoids a dry A-Z format. In addition, he explains why these wrong stories are created, disseminated, and persist, even after being corrected time and time again. David Wilton debunks the most persistently wrong word histories, and gives, to the best of our actual knowledge, the real stories behind these perennially mis-etymologized words. Do you "know" that posh comes from an acronym meaning "port out, starboard home"? That "the whole nine yards" comes from (pick one) the length of a WWII gunner's belt the amount of fabric needed to make a kilt a sarcastic football expression? That Chicago is called "The Windy City" because of the bloviating habits of its politicians, and not the breeze off the lake?
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