[1] For a list of these see p. [xii].
[2] Compilatio, "pillage, polling, robbing" (Cooper).
[3] Among words on which the reader will find either entirely new information or a modification of generally accepted views are akimbo, anlace, branks, caulk, cockney, felon (a whitlow), foil, kestrel, lugger, mulligrubs, mystery (a craft), oriel, patch, petronel, salet, sentry, sullen, tret, etc.
[4] In spite of the fact that the New English Dictionary now finds shark applied to the fish some years before the first record of shark, a sharper, parasite, I adhere to my belief that the latter is the earlier sense. The new example quoted, from a Tudor "broadside," is more suggestive of a sailor's apt nickname than of zoological nomenclature—"There is no proper name for it that I knowe, but that sertayne men of Captayne Haukinses doth call it a sharke" (1569).
[5] See the author's Surnames (John Murray, 1916), especially pp. 177-83.
CONTENTS
| CHAP. | PAGE | |
| I. | Our Vocabulary | [1] |
| II. | Wanderings of Words | [17] |
| III. | Words of Popular Manufacture | [29] |
| IV. | Words and Places | [47] |
| V. | Phonetic Accidents | [54] |
| VI. | Words and Meanings | [72] |
| VII. | Semantics | [86] |
| VIII. | Metaphor | [105] |
| IX. | Folk-Etymology | [113] |
| X. | Doublets | [139] |
| XI. | Homonyms | [155] |
| XII. | Family Names | [169] |
| XIII. | Etymological Fact and Fiction | [184] |
| Index | [205] |