The Roots of English: A Reader's Handbook of Word Origins

by Robert Claiborne

The richest of languages, English contains some 600,000 words OED . Of these perhaps 450,000 are in current use. Clairborne discusses the sources of the language in general, then specifically describes the Germanic, Latin, Greek roots of our words. A delightful browse with much value as a reference. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Genres: Language, Reference, Nonfiction, Linguistics, Writing

335 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Robert Watson Claiborne, Jr. (1919–1990) American folk singer, labor organizer and writer. He wrote primarily about science and linguistics.

Reviews

[Jonathan]

A slim, handy resource. The absence of details of evolution from various roots means that it won't be of much interest except as a speedy look-up table.

[Dan]

A useful reference work on etymology. Traces our English words to their roots—frequently through the Germanic or Dutch to the most probable Indo-Aryan origins.

Acquired 1992
"AP" (Circum used books?)
Montreal, Quebec

[Cat.]

The introduction was interesting, but the body of the book is strictly reference, and boring: just a list of root words and their definitions, as best we can tell. They're mostly Indo-European, with a few Germanic ones tossed in; interesting, but not much fun to read, so I stopped about page 30.

[David]

Nice little handbook of Indo-European roots and so forth.