Disclosure: I read an ARC copy of the eBook of Useless Etymology by Jess Zafarris for free via NetGalley in return for writing an honest review.
My review:
Rating: 4 ★
This book might be called Useless Etymology but there’s so much information packed into just a few hundred pages, I found it such an interesting read.
It really takes you on a journey through history with the English language, how words have originated and changed over the years.
I ended up with so many highlights by the time I finished reading this – one of the ones that really stuck in my head was (and I quote), “in the mid-1800s, exclamation points were sometimes known as “shriek marks.”” I don’t know why but that really amused me, like the sentences are so hyped to exclaim something they are shrieking it! Haha!
It also answered a question I’d had since I started learning French at school, why is a potato called a pomme de terre, when pomme is apple?!
While I knew Latin is very much present in law, science and medicine, before this year, I hadn’t realised just how much the English language was influenced by Latin in every day words. I have actually been learning some Latin over the past few years though and I really enjoyed seeing all the Latin words throughout the book, not just those but Ancient Greek and others too.
For someone who grow up questioning sometimes – why is a chair called a chair? No really, me and mum have had conversations like that. Like where did a word come from? Why is it called that? After reading this I’ve realised there’s so much more to the “why” of a word.
This would be a great book to keep on your coffee table to pick up of an evening and learn something new. In fact I might just get a copy for my own coffee table (or rather, the round table in the middle of the room that we call a coffee table) so I can do just that and refer back to it in the future.
This book is being released in eBook on Kindle and hardback on the 9th October.
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