Word Mysteries & Histories: From Quiche to Humble Pie
By the Editors of the American Heritage Dictionaries
Foreward by Robert Claiborne
Houghton Mifflin, 308 pages, $16.95
The pursuit of words–what they mean, how they`re used, where they`re from–is a minor national pastime. From William Safire`s popular On Language column in the New York Times Magazine to the shelf of my local public library, where there are a half dozen well-thumbed dictionaries of word origins, we word lovers are holding out against incursions from the land of Walkmen.
Hoping to capitalize on the ”word market,” Houghton Mifflin has just published a brief dictionary–512 words worth–of word origins, ”Word Mysteries & Histories: From Quiche to Humble Pie,” authored, according to the title page, ”By the Editors of The American Heritage Dictionaries,” and inspired by letters from readers inquiring about word origins.
The publisher and editors of ”Word Mysteries & Histories” have let us down sorely on many of the modest expectations we have of dictionaries and similar reference books. We expect them to be informative, concise, well-written, easy on the eyes (unless, like the compact ”Oxford English Dictionary,” they come with a magnifying glass) and to include as many words as money can buy. In the dictionary business, more is usually better.
”Word Mysteries & Histories” is written and designed, it seems, to convey as little information in as much space as possible. It is a visually attractive book–almost too attractive for its purpose. The page design is full of white space. There are 31 full pages of wood-cut illustrations by Barry Moser. They are quite lovely, but one wonders why 31 pages of a 308-page word reference book are devoted to pictures.
For the most part, the entries are unnecessarily long-winded, not consistently informative and written in a style that is condescending and embarrassingly cute. The entry for helicopter (which comes from two Greek words, one meaning ”spiral,” the other ”wing”) ends with this comment:
”Look out below!”
When the editors finally get around to discussing the origin of a word, the information is not presented with any discernible order or logic.
In a half-page entry, we`re told that ”bathroom” is a euphemism for
”the place where one performs those bodily functions necessary to a healthy daily existence.” But we`re never told when or where it first appeared in the language. For ”diet,” we`re told the origins of two of its meanings–”one`s usual food,” and ”assembly,” as in legislative assembly. The far more popular use of the word ”diet”–the one you go on to lose weight–is not mentioned at all, and left me wondering when ”dieting,” the word and the deed, came into the language.
Despite these many complaints, there is quite a bit of interesting etymological information in ”Word Mysteries.” When Shakespeare used
”weird” to describe the three sisters in ”Macbeth,” it was a noun that meant fate or destiny and was misinterpreted as an adjective.
Unfortunately, the editors of ”Word Mysteries & Histories” have underestimated our interest in word origins. We really don`t need to be coaxed, cajoled, condescended to, or shown pretty pictures, in order to keep reading.
