An Analytic Dictionary of the English Language ─ An Introduction

This work introduces renowned linguistics scholar Anatoly Liberman's comprehensive dictionary and bibliography of the etymology of English words. The English etymological dictionaries published in the past claim to solve the mysteries of word origins even when those origins have been widely disputed.
An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology, by contrast, discusses all of the existing derivations of English words and chooses the best one. In this inaugural volume, Liberman addresses fifty-five words traditionally dismissed as being of unknown etymology. Some of the entries are among the most commonly used words in English, including man, boy, girl, bird, brain, understand, key, ever, and yet. Others are slang: mooch, nudge, pimp, filch, gawk, and skedaddle. Many, such as beacon, oat, hemlock, ivy, and toad, have existed for centuries, whereas some have appeared more recently - for example, slang, kitty-corner, and Jeep. They are all united by their etymological obscurity.
This unique resource discusses the main problems in the methodology of etymological research and contains indexes of subjects, names, and all of the root words. Each entry is a full-fledged article, shedding light for the first time on the source of some of the most widely disputed word origins in the English language.

Anatoly Liberman is professor of Germanic philology at the University of Minnesota.