der a book
altogether fresh, amusing and delightful."--_Morning Post._ Second
Impression. 5s. net.

_All rights reserved_

THE ROMANCE OF
WORDS

BY ERNEST WEEKLEY, M.A.

PROFESSOR OF FRENCH AND HEAD OF THE MODERN LANGUAGE
DEPARTMENT AT UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, NOTTINGHAM; SOMETIME
SCHOLAR OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE; AUTHOR OF "THE
ROMANCE OF NAMES," "SURNAMES"

"Vous savez le latin, sans doute?"--
"Oui, mais faites comme si je ne le savais pas."
(MOLIERE, _Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme_, ii. 6.)

LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.

FIRST EDITION MARCH 1912
_Reprinted_ JUNE 1912
SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED NOVEMBER 1913
THIRD EDITION MAY 1917
FOURTH EDITION JANUARY 1922
_Reprinted_ FEBRUARY 1925
_Reprinted_ JANUARY 1927

PREFACE

A long and somewhat varied experience in language teaching has convinced
me that there are still, in spite of the march of science, many people
who are capable of getting intellectual pleasure from word-history. I
hope that to such people this little book, the amusement of occasional
leisure, will not be unwelcome. It differs, I believe, from any other
popular book on language in that it deals essentially with the origins
of words, and makes no attempt to enforce a moral. My aim has been to
select especially the unexpected in etymology, "things not generally
known," such as the fact that _Tammany_ was an Indian chief, that
_assegai_ occurs in Chaucer, that _jilt_ is identical with _Juliet_,
that _brazil_ wood is not named from _Brazil_, that to _curry favour_
means to comb down a horse of a particular colour, and so forth. The
treatment is made as simple as possible, a bowing acquaintance with
Latin and French being all that is assumed, though words from many other
languages are necessarily included. In the case of each word I have
traced the history just so far back as it is likely to be of interest to
the reader who is not a philological specialist.

I have endeavoured to state each proposition in its simplest terms,
without enumerating all the reservations and indirect factors which
belong to the history of almost ever