Newly updated to incorporate recent additions to the English language, the Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins provides a fascinating exploration of the origins and development of over 3,000 words in the English language.

How to Read a Word, written by the noted lexicographer Elizabeth Knowles, shows us how we might delve into the origins, associations, and evolution of words, and is primarily concerned with the following two points: what questions can be asked about a word? And how can they be answered?

With over 17,000 entries, this is the most authoritative and comprehensive guide to word origins available in paperback.

In The Origins of English Words, Shipley catalogues these proposed roots and follows the often devious, always fascinating, process by which some of their offshoots have grown. Anecdotal, eclectic, and always enthusiastic, The Origins of English Words is a diverting expedition beyond linguistics into literature, history, folklore, anthropology, philosophy, and science.

With over 3,000 entries, the Dictionary covers over 25,000 root, or basic, English words, detailing the derivation of each in clearly written passages that interweave thousands of linguistic and historical facts to explain where words originate, how their forms have changed in English, and how their meanings have developed over time.