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Chambers Dictionary of Etymology
 
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Chambers Dictionary of Etymology (Hardcover)

by Chambers (ed.) (Author)
4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
RRP: £30.00
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Product details

  • Hardcover: 1284 pages
  • Publisher: Chambers Harrap (6 Aug 1999)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0550142304
  • ISBN-13: 978-0550142306
  • Product Dimensions: 25.1 x 18 x 5.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 11,850 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories:

    #6 in  Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Social Sciences > Linguistics > Historical & Comparative Linguistics > Etymology
    #9 in  Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Social Sciences > Linguistics > Reference
    #64 in  Books > Reference > Dictionaries & Thesauri

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Product Description

Review

‘The best of scholarship ... the most user-friendly of etymological dictionaries’

(University of Georgia )


Product Description

With over 30,000 entries, Chambers Dictionary of Etymology is a prestigious and scholarly dictionary that explains where English words come from. An important etymological resource for the expert, it is also a useful reference source for the general reader.

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Customer Reviews

7 Reviews
5 star:
 (4)
4 star:
 (2)
3 star:    (0)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:
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Average Customer Review
4.1 out of 5 stars (7 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
169 of 170 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Correction of a false statement, 3 Dec 2004
By D. Brodsky (France) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This is the first review I have written, but I felt it necessary to correct a false statement in another review, particuarly since 28 of 32 people found the review (which gave the book only 1 star) helpful. Specifically,

QUOTE A lot of the words don't go back to the real origin. "Street' for example is said to be derived from the Latin "Strata" or "paved road", when the Latin actually comes from the Semitic, "Serat" for "straight road".UNQUOTE

Semitic "Serat" (also Arabic "Sirat") comes from Latin (via Greek as an intermediary) not the other way around as asserted by the reviewer. There is simply no doubt about this. As pointed out in the Chambers Dictionary, "Strata" is the past participle of the Latin verb STERNERE ("to lay down", "to spread out") which shares a common INDO-EUROPEAN origin with the Germanic root which is the basis of English STREW. I have not seen ANY etymological dictionary that has a different explanation, and I have consulted authoritative ones in English, French, Spanish, Italian and German. In English, this origin is confirmed by, among others, (i) the Oxford English Dictionary, (ii) the American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.

A second comment of the same reviewer was

QUOTE The dictionary also lists many languages that use a specific word without telling us about the source of the word, which is what etymology is about.UNQUOTE

In fact, my impression is that the Chambers Dictionary gives far more information than other comparable etymological dictionaries in terms of the ultimate roots of words. Taking a word at random, for "make", Old English macian is traced back through Old Saxon makon to Proto-Germanic *makojanan from the Indo-European root *mag-. It is also shown to be cognate with Old High German mahhon, Old Frisian makia, Greek magenai ("to be kneaded, be molded") and mageus ("baker"), Old Slavic mazati ("anoint"), among others.

The Chambers Dictionary is one of the best I have seen, particularly in view of its not unreasonable price.

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23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent resource., 20 Jun 2007
By T. Holmewood (Oxford, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This is an excellent etymology dictionary. If I could sum it up with a single signifier, it would be CLEAR!

I compared this with the OED in-store and found that the clarity of entries - definition, history - in the Chambers by far exceeded that of its competitor - especially its minimal use of abbreviations (of which the OED was laden). Not only does the perspicuity of its entries place it above the OED, the Chambers' clear typeset, complimented by its leaf quality, elevated it even further over that of its ugly other, whose use of some obscenely obscure Romanesque font really didn't flatter its crude sheets of recycled Financial Times.

I would strongly advise this for those who are untrained in linguistics and/or philology. The OED retails at twice the price of Chambers, and from my perspective is 'clearly' inferior. This reference book will - for a long time to come - have its place by my bedside.

OED = Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology
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50 of 52 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars an informative reference explaining how words originated, 19 Dec 2000
This is an impecably researched book and makes fascinating reading. It explains how the words we use today originated and when.

My only criticism of the book is that it has adopted American spellings of words in certain cases, e.g. smolder, rather than smoulder.

But it is competatively priced against the other etymology dictionaries. So, you pays your money and you takes your choice.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Good for beginners, unsatisfactory for deep research
I give four stars to this dictionary only for the sake of the two years I had been devoutly reading it and copying out the most fascinatingly unexpected etymologies of words when... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Annie Martirosyan

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Pastime !
This book is equally useful (and endlessly fascinating) to the serious researcher as to someone simply interested in words, where they originate from, and particularly to those... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Evi

1.0 out of 5 stars Terrible.. Horrible..
I was very disappointed with this dictionary. A lot of the words don't go back to the real origin. "Street' for example is said to be derived from the Latin... Read more
Published on 14 Feb 2002

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating dictionary
This is a dictionary you will not want to put away and is extremely user-friendly.
Published on 11 Dec 2001

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