An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language

Walter W. Skeat

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780486440521
• eBook ISBN: 9780486317656
• Topic: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Subtopic: Historische & vergleichende Sprachwissenschaften

Comprehensive and easy to use, this resource offers numerous cross-references that allow readers to trace English words back to their Indo-European roots. By exhibiting the relationship between English and cognate tongues, it reveals the language's basis in Latin and Greek as well as prior derivations from Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic sources.
Each entry begins with a brief definition and an exact statement of the term's actual (or probable) language of origin. An account of its transition to English usage follows, along with either a few quotations that indicate the period at which the word was adapted, or else the usual Middle-English forms. A helpful Appendix contains a glossary of prefixes, a general accounting of suffixes, a table of Indo-European roots, and vocabularies of homonyms and doublets, in addition to lists showing the distribution of the sources of English.
A standard reference for many years, this volume will prove a practical resource not only to students of comparative philology and of early English, but to everyone with an interest in the origin, history, and development of the English language.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface to the New and Revised Edition
• Preface to the First Edition
• Preface to the Second Edition
• Preface to the Third Edition
• Brief Notes (Revised) upon the Languages cited in the Dictionary
• Canons for Etymology
• List of Books consulted
• Key to the General Plan
• Dictionary of Etymologies
• Appendix: I. List of Prefixes
• Supplement