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11/23 I loved this book which I picked up on Prime Unlimited. I find Etymology fascinating and this book makes it funny and entertaining too! Would highly recommend!

The author manages to keep this interesting and funny the whole way through. Loved it! 4 ⭐️

I love writers that write about writing and language, I could happily read about etymology all day #ForeverNovember #Writer

Absolutely fab read for anyone keen on learning about the etymology of words and language in general. Forsyth cleverly weaves each word definition into the next with a lighthearted yet extremely informative structure that is jam packed with little nuggets of fascinating linguistic and historic information. I revelled in every page.

Brilliant book for those who are as fascinated as I am by the origins of the English language.

If you like reading about where words come from especially when the author is funny, then you'll love this one. When you're done with it you may find yourself staring off into the distance, like my cat here, wishing it was longer. Luckily Forsyth has several others about other bookish topics.

#FALLISBOOKED - Day Fourteen - #REDCOVER

DAY 6 OF #Gratitude30 is all about #words and Forsyth has published some fun books about the origins of the amazing, eclectic English language

Fun but I suspect not always reliable

This book is fascinating.

Of course, it may not have happened exactly that way. The story has been improved beyond repair.

My cover

I really love acquiring useless knowledge 👍❤️

Just so much fun! Read it. The pic is just for more fun along the same lines.

An incredibly entertaining and educational read for the budding etymologist!

#uncannyoctober day 31: best of the month
I thoroughly enjoyed The Etymologicon; it was a refreshing pick-me-up on my vacation. (Yes I am a nerd.)
Reading total is about normal for me, certainly better than September! It was a good month overall.

Brilliant! I loved this book. Nearly every page had me laughing. Highly recommended.

😂😂😂

I could just screenshot this entire book. It is hilarious.

Tell us how you really feel about Skelton! 😂

AZTEC BALLS on the train 😂😂😂

😂😂 snorting with laughter on public transit

August has really been a great reading month! I listened to some fascinating audiobooks and read a decent variety in the way of content. I count Tolkien's Lord of the Rings in my all-time favorites, so a reread of The Fellowship of the Ring was my fiction favorite. For non-fiction, The Etymologicon was full of interesting information about word histories and often hilarious at the same time.

#BestofAugust #monthlystats

I saw a post from @jess.how about another book by this author that also mentioned this one and immediately looked it up. I've only been listening for half an hour, but it's fascinating and hilarious!

#audiobook #nonfiction #Hoopla

The neatest palindrome in English is undoubtedly: “A man, a plan, a canal: Panama."

Occasionally people make the mistake of asking me where a word comes from. They never make this mistake twice. I am naturally a stern and silent fellow; even forbidding. But there‘s something about etymology and where words come from that overcomes my inbuilt taciturnity. A chap once asked me where the word biscuit came from. He was eating one...I explained to him that a biscuit is cooked twice, or in French bi-cuit, and he thanked me for that...

We usually think of beavers as sweet little creatures who build dams, but that‘s not how a constipated Renaissance man would view them; a constipated Renaissance man would view them as his relief and his cure. You see, the beaver has two sacs in his groin that contain a noxious and utterly disgusting oil that acts as a very effective laxative. This very valuable liquid was known as castor oil.

Monty Python is, for reasons best known to nobody, rather popular with computer programmers. There‘s even a programming language called Python, based on their sketches.

All over America, infuriating white people would address black men with the words “Hey, boy.” ...That‘s why, in the 1940s, black Americans started taking the fight the other way and greeting each other with the words “Hey, man.” ...a reaction against all those years of being called boy. It worked. White people were so confused by “Hey, man” that the sixties happened and everybody, of whatever race, started calling each other man...

A bar, as any good dictionary will tell you, is a rod of wood or iron that can be used to fasten a gate. From this came the idea of a bar as any let or hindrance that can stop you going where you want to; specifically the bar in a pub or tavern is the bar-rier behind which is stored all the lovely intoxicating liquors that only the bar-man is allowed to lay is hands on without forking out.

Pot itself has nothing to do with pots and pans, but comes from the Mexican-Spanish word potiguaya, which means marijuana leaves. And marijuana is a Mexification of 'Mary Jane' for reasons that everybody is much too stoned to remember.

But Shakespeare never drank coffee. Nor did Julius Caesar, or Socrates. Alexander the Great conquered half the world without even a café latte to perk him up. The pyramids were designed and constructed without a whiff of a sniff of caffeine. Coffee was introduced to Europe only in 1615. The achievements of antiquity are quite enough to cow the modern human, but when you realize that they did it all without caffeine it becomes almost unbearable.

The Latin word for sausage was botulus, from which English gets two words. One of them is the lovely botuliform, which means sausage-shaped and is a more useful word than you might think. The other word is botulism.

Sausages may taste lovely, but it's usually best not to ask what's actually in them. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it was a sausage-maker who disposed of the body.

Poetry is much more important than the truth, and, if you don't believe that, try using the two methods to get laid.

I'm going with audiobook narrators for the #bestnarrator #octphotochallenge prompt. Basically because I will take any chance I can get to tell people about these two books. The Etymologicon sounds like it might be a bit dry, but it is clever, witty, educational, and hilarious. Don Hagen's narration adds even more greatness. And I have waxed poetic about RPO so many times, but I think I like the audio version even more thanks to Wil Wheaton.

Another bike means another chunk of this! It is delightful so far, interesting, hilarious and easy. The narrator is also brilliantly dry

Some hands free reading for the bike this afternoon

Another strange shelf, albeit a smaller one, in my bookcases is about the history of languages and words and this book is definitely in this category. The author covers the origins and history of everyday words, some obvious some far from obvious. Ever wondered what Point Blank actually means or what Psychoanalysis means if you look at the origin of the underlying words or Wikipedia? well this book will tell you.

A wander through the perverse, and sometimes mundane, origins of some of the most popular (or not popular enough!) words in the English language.