Significant Etymology

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. This book is simply what it professes to be, a collection and explanation of the significant etymologies of the English language. It is not written for philologists, but for intelligent and thoughtful men and women who are interested in the study of their own language, and of the sources from which it is derived. I have called it Significant Etymology, because only those roots are given which throw light upon the signification of the words derived from them. To quote a word from German, for example, of the same sound and of the same meaning as our own, is not significant etymology, but insignificant and useless, unless for comparative philology; and besides, it is just as likely that the German word has been taken from the English as the English from the German. In every case, however, where the original word helps us to understand the meaning of an English word better, or shows us how it has come to bear its present meaning, I have endeavoured to trace the etymology clearly step by step through the written records of even past centuries, until its origin has been found in the fixed form of a parent language.