Good Words to You: An All-New Dictionary and Native's Guide to the Unknown American Language

by John Ciardi

Features hundreds of stories, legends, facts, and fallacies about words and phrases, their origins, and their mysteries

Genres: Reference, Nonfiction

343 pages, Hardcover

First published April 27, 1987

About the author

John Anthony Ciardi was an American poet, translator, editor, writer and etymologist.

Reviews

[Phrodrick slowed his growing backlog · Rating 4 out of 5]

had not paid close attention and maybe this review will mean that you do not have to. I came to know and admire the late John Ciardi by his often whimsical and always interesting short pieces broadcast on NPR. His broadcasts, entitled Good Words to You, brought to the field of etymology his sense of humor, his high standards for research and his poets instinct for the unusual.

I had hoped to find that this volume would contain large portions of his radio scripts. The subtitle of the book should have been my warning. Good Words to you is labeled as "An all new Browser's Dictionary". Mr. Ciardi had already published two earlier Browser's Dictionary and there would be another titled as Third Edition. I am disappointed, but mostly by my mistake and less by this book.

Good Words to you repeats some words from earlier editions and some will be repeated. Why for example, Egg Plant occurs in more than one book, I do not know. A number of terms chosen are not so much part of the language as part of the idiom of Ciari's life time and neighborhoods. Occasionally he includes political and other time sensitive comments as part of illustrating or making fun with words, but later generations and those not of his politics may not `get' his joke. The intro to this edition and the 3rd Browsers could be duplicates.

Over all this is better book than Browsers Dictionary third edition. There tends to be more of what made his broadcasts a pleasure. The three BDs tends to be more dictionary, less entertainment.

For the serious etymologist this is a serious book. Ciardi has definite standards of what histories he will accept and when he believes other sources are bluffing. I tend to take his word as relatively more definitive. But the field like many others continues to learn and re-learn and correct and speculate. So maybe the best academic use of this book is as a partial check against a more recent etymology.

[Skallagrimsen]

An interesting collection of American idioms and their origins--at least I thought so browsing through it as a teenager.