mpilatio_, "pillage, polling, robbing" (Cooper).

[3] Among words on which the reader will find either entirely new
information or a modification of generally accepted views are _akimbo_,
_anlace_, _branks_, _caulk_, _cockney_, _felon_ (a whitlow), _foil_,
_kestrel_, _lugger_, _mulligrubs_, _mystery_ (a craft), _oriel_,
_patch_, _petronel_, _salet_, _sentry_, _sullen_, _tret_, etc.

[4] In spite of the fact that the _New English Dictionary_ now finds
_shark_ applied to the fish some years before the first record of
_shark_, a sharper, parasite, I adhere to my belief that the latter is
the earlier sense. The new example quoted, from a Tudor "broadside," is
more suggestive of a sailor's apt nickname than of zoological
nomenclature--"There is no proper name for it that I knowe, but that
sertayne men of Captayne Haukinses doth call it a _sharke_" (1569).

[5] See the author's _Surnames_ (John Murray, 1916), especially pp.
177-83.

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE
I. OUR VOCABULARY 1

II. WANDERINGS OF WORDS 17

III. WORDS OF POPULAR MANUFACTURE 29

IV. WORDS AND PLACES 47

V. PHONETIC ACCIDENTS 54

VI. WORDS AND MEANINGS 72

VII. SEMANTICS 86

VIII. METAPHOR 105

IX. FOLK-ETYMOLOGY 113

X. DOUBLETS 139

XI. HOMONYMS 155

XII. FAMILY NAMES 169

XIII. ETYMOLOGICAL FACT AND FICTION 184

INDEX 205

The following dictionaries are quoted without further reference:--

Palsgrave, French and English (1530).
Cooper, Latin and English (1573).
Percyvall, Spanish and English (1591).
Florio, Italian and English (1598).
Cotgrave, French and English (1611).
Torriano, Italian and English (1659).
Hexham, Dutch and English (1660).
Ludwig, German and English (1716).

THE ROMANCE OF WORDS

CHAPTER I

OUR VOCABULARY

The bulk of our literary language is Latin, and consists of words either
borrowed directly or taken from "learned" French forms. The every-day
vocabulary of the less educated is of Old English, commonly called
Anglo-Saxon, origin; and from the same source comes what we may call the
machinery of the language, _i.e._, its inflexi