Etymology for Everybody

Our recent show about etymology featured an interview with Anatoly Liberman, author of the marvelous book Word Origins and How We Know Them: Etymology for Everybody. It is, as far as I know, the only book about word origins that tells how etymologists do their work. The book is scholarly and often challenging, but also amusing and full of helpful insights for those who are serious about understanding how words form and change over time.

Professor Liberman, who's been described as "perhaps the world's best-read individual" on the history of English words, also has an elegant new blog over at Oxford University Press. Check it out.