Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins » (REV)

Robert Hendrickson is the author of more than 25 books, including American Literary Anecdotes, British Literary Anecdotes, and World Literary Anecdotes, as well as New Yawk Tawk, Whistlin' Dixie, Yankee Talk, and Mountain Range, all for Facts On File. He resides in Peconic, New York.

In this entertaining compendium, Robert Hendrickson, author of numerous popular works on language and literature, traces the sometimes bizarre and always fascinating origins and developments of more than 9,000 words and phrases, including slang, proverbs, animal and plant names, place names, nicknames, historical expressions, foreign-language expressions, and more. The emphasis throughout is on words and expressions with origins that are not adequately explained; or not addressed at all; in standard dictionaries. This greatly expanded and revised version of the critically acclaimed 1987 original offers more than 2,000 new entries, including:

Paparazzi: Director Frederico Fellini named a hyperactive photographer in his film La Dolce Vita Signore Paparazzo, after Italian slang for "mosquito". The popularity of Fellini's film led to the widespread use of the term paparazzi for relentless swarms of celebrity-chasing photographers.

Quaaludes: The inventor of Quaaludes named his new drug after a contraction of quiet interludes; which he hoped it would induce.

Toady: In the 17th century, conjurer's assistants would eat a toad, causing temporary illness that they would later "heal", thereby demonstrating their "miraculous" powers. The assistants came to be known as "toad-eaters," from which derives our modern insult toady.

Library Journal

This is a collection of stories, speculative though entertaining, behind 7500 English words and phrases, from A & P through babushka, Calvinism, Davy Crockett, eggs Benedict, fifty-four forty or fight, German measles, and many more to ZZZ. The stories are fascinating, but the book is marred by many misspellings, particularly in the quotations from German. Still, it will appeal to word buffs and hence should be of interest to public libraries. Scholars will probably continue to rely on the OED and other standard reference works. Catherine von Schon, SUNY at Stony Brook