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“The stocking filler of the season...how else to describe a book that explains the connection between Dom Perignon and Mein Kampf.”--The Observer

“Crikey...this is addictive!”--The Times

“Mark Forsyth is clearly a man who knows his onions.”--Daily Telegraph

Preface -- A Turn-up for the Books -- A Game of Chicken -- Hydrogentlemanly -- The Old and New Testicle -- Parenthetical Codpieces -- Suffering for my Underwear -- Pans -- Miltonic Meanders -- Bloody Typical Semantic Shifts -- The Proof of the Pudding -- Susage Poison in your Face -- Bows and Arrows and Cats -- Black and White -- Hat Cheque Point Charlie -- Sex and Bread -- Concealed Farts -- Wool -- Turkey -- Insulting Foods -- Folk Etymology -- Butterflies of the World -- Psychoanalysis and the Release of the Butterfly -- The Villains of the Language -- Two Executioners and a Doctor -- Thomas Crapper -- Mythical Acronyms -- John the Baptist and the Sound of Music -- Organic, Organised, Organs -- Clipping -- Buffalo -- Antanaclasis -- China -- Coincidences and Patterns -- Frankly, My Dear Frankfurter -- Beastly Foreigners -- Pejoratives -- Ciao, Slave Driver -- Robots -- Terminators and Prejudice -- Terminators and Equators -- Equality in Ecuador -- Bogeys -- Bugbears and Bedbugs -- Von Munchausen's Computer -- SPAM (not spam) -- Heroin -- Morphing De Quincey and Shelley -- Star-Spangled Drinking Songs -- Torpedoes and Turtles -- From Mount Vernon to Portobello Road with a Hangover -- A Punch of Drinks -- The Scampering Champion of the Champagne Campaign -- Insulting Names -- Peter Pan -- Herbaceous Communication -- Papa was a Saxum Volutum -- Flying Peters -- Venezuela and Venus and Venice -- What News on the Rialto? -- Magazines -- Dick Snary -- Autopeotomy -- Water Closets for Russia -- Fat Gunhilda -- Queen Gunhilda and the Gadgets -- Shell -- In a Nutshell -- The Iliad -- The Human Body -- The Five Fingers -- Hoax Bodies -- Bunking and Debunking -- The Anglo-Saxon Mystery -- The Sedge-Strewn Stream and Globalisation -- Coffee -- Cappuccino Monks -- Called to the Bar -- Ignorami -- Fossil-less -- The Frequentative Suffix -- Pending -- Worms and their Turnings -- Mathematics -- Stellafied and Oily Beavers -- Beards -- Islands -- Sandwich Islands -- The French Revolution in English Words -- Romance Languages -- Peripatetic Peoples -- From Bohemia to California (via Primrose Hill) -- California -- The Hash Guys -- Drugs -- Pleasing Pslams -- Biblical Errors -- Salt -- Halcyon Days -- Dog Days -- Cynical Dogs -- Greek Education and Fastchild -- Cybermen -- Turning Trix -- Amateur-Lovers -- Dirty Money -- Death Pledges -- Wagering War -- Strapped for Cash -- Fast Bucks and Dead Ones -- The Buck Steps here -- Back to Howth Castle and Environs -- Quizzes -- The Cream of the Sources.

This perfect gift for readers, writers, and literature majors alike unearths the quirks of the English language. For example, do you know why a mortgage is literally a “death pledge”? Why guns have girls’ names? Why “salt” is related to “soldier”? Discover the answers to all of these etymological questions and more in this fascinating book for fans of of Eats, Shoots & Leaves.

The Etymologicon is a completely unauthorized guide to the strange underpinnings of the English language. It explains how you get from “gruntled” to “disgruntled”; why you are absolutely right to believe that your meager salary barely covers “money for salt”; how the biggest chain of coffee shops in the world connects to whaling in Nantucket; and what, precisely, the Rolling Stones have to do with gardening. This witty book will awake the linguist in you and illuminate the hidden meanings behind common words and phrases, tracing their evolution through all of their surprising paths throughout history.