I've just finished reading Michael Quinion's book Port Out Starboard Home. It's more or less a series of extracts from his excellent web site.

While I was reading it I had a good chuckle at the strange things amateur etymologists come up with to explain word origins. Some were new, many I've seen before.

A few though gave me pause for thought because among the origins called into question were some that I believed myself. (Of course, there's nothing that makes Quinion infallible but at least he's generally thorough.)

Some of the phrases where I believed things Quinion says aren't true are:

Welsh rabbit - which I genuinely thought was a corrupted form of Welsh rarebit. Quinion suggests it's the other way round.

Toerag (an insulting term for a contemptible person, maybe not known to our US posters) which Quinion says comes from the strips of cloth wrapped for protection around the feet of tramps and criminals. I have always believed it to be a racist corruption of Tuareg, an explanation that he seems not to have encountered.

Real Tennis- the suggestion that this is a corrupted version of "Royal Tennis" is apparently a later justification. Quinion suggests that this is the game that was originally just called "tennis" and that "real tennis" was a retronym when "lawn tennis" appropiated the name.

The subtlest is the expression

"The exception that proves the rule".

I have always considered this to be "prove" in the sense of "test". Not so apparently. Quinion says that it originates in the Latin expression "exceptio probat regulam in casibus no exceptis" meaning something like "the exception confirms the rule for cases not excepted."

In other words if you see a sign that says "children under three feet tall not admitted" you can reasonably infer that children over three feet tall will be. You can deduce the allowed cases by looking at the ones not allowed.

Just goes to show that even those of us who think we know a thing or two about words can be mistaken in our beliefs.

It's a good book even if most (maybe all) of it is available for free on the web site.

I second Bob's recommendation. In the US it's published under a different title: Ballyhoo, Buckaroo, and Spuds.

quote:

It's a good book even if most (maybe all) of it is available for free on the web site.

Why would you spend your personal money on a book? Don't your libraries carry such items?

*toggling to another window to reserve recommended book*

I've mentioned this before. My nearest decent library is at least an hour and a half round trip away even if I don't spend time in it. There were two closer ones, both now closed.

Besides, I like owning books.

Besides, CW, especially for good books like the one Bob describes, I love to have them to refer to.