The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll Through the Hidden Connections of the English Language

by Mark Forsyth

Soon was the Anglo-Saxon word for now. It’s just that after a thousand years of people saying ‘I’ll do that soon’, soon has ended up meaning what it does today.

Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it was a sausage-maker who disposed of the body. In nineteenth-century America, the belief that sausages were usually made out of dog meat was so widespread that they started to be called hotdogs,