Publisher's Synopsis
The average English speaker knows about 50,000 words. This dictionary uncovers the often surprising connections between words, revealing the origins and links between for example, "beef" and "cow", "secret" and "crime", "flour" and "pollen", "imbecile" and "bacteria", "plankton" and "complain".;Derived from its larger parent, the "Bloomsbury Dictionary of Word Origins", this book selects the main areas of etymological interest for the general reader. It shows how English today has developed from its Indo-European origins and how the different main influences on the language have intermingled. Also the book deals with the many new words and coinages which enter the language every year.
