Martha Barnette

Dog Days and Dandelions (eBook, ePUB)

A Lively Guide to the Animal Meanings Behind Everyday Words

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

From apian (like a bee) to zodiac (little-animals circle), a word book that spots the animal origins of words and names.

There are mice in your muscles, and blackbirds in your merlot. Behind adulation is a dog's wagging tail. Peculiar houses a herd of cattle. Grubby is crawling with bugs. Wordhound Martha Barnette collects more than 300 common (and a few not-so-common) words that have surprising animal roots. Tracing word origins back to ancient Greek and Latin as well as to European roots and American slang, the entries offer a guided tour through literature, science, folklore, politics, and more-with a wilderness of animal meanings at every turn.

For fledgling word sleuths as well as those who fawn over etymologies, this is a delightful smorgasbord for writers, students, and word lovers.

"In this zoological tour of the beastly backgrounds behind common phrases such as swan song and rare words such as snollygoster , Barnette sheds new light on both everyday and esoteric language . . . Barnette's etymological sleuthing, itself a word of animal derivation, is as educational as it is engrossing." - Booklist

"Arranged alphabetically, the 300-plus entries make for good browsing, and readers with a penchant for odd and underused words, such as myrmidon (an unprincipled lackey) and musteline (resembling a weasel) will find them aplenty here." - Publishers Weekly

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: St. Martin's Publishing Group
• Seitenzahl: 209
• Erscheinungstermin: 12. November 2013
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781466856882
• Artikelnr.: 41055324