I've just started reading The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language and can't recommend it too highly to anyone who has an interest in, or a love of, words. The author, Mark Forsyth, says his family forced him into writing it as all other avenues of self- or psychiatric help couldn't cure him of his insistence in not only taking a single simple word and tracing its roots, and their roots, and their roots, but then talking about it to anyone with the temerity to ask and the patience to listen.
The first chapter takes us from books to bookmakers to turn-ups; the second from medieval French gambling to the gene-pool - honestly, there are links - and all written with a wryly self-deprecatory style that I can only envy. You'll find it on Amazon and in your Christmas stocking if you're lucky.
And I don't know the author.
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