As read by Hugh Dennis on Radio 4! I caught the last episode over Christmas and it was funny, and available for 99p for my new kindle, so I bought The Etymologicon by Mark Forsyth. Who also blogs over at The Inky Fool.

It is a series of brief chapters on the origin of words in English, where they come from and how they’re related. Or not, in the case of some sets of words that seem like they should be. It’s utterly delightful.

I’m a word nerd. I love words, I love finding out where words come from and tracing the changes in meaning. I love how versatile and adaptable the English language is. So, there’s pretty much no way I wasn’t going to like this book, but I found I enjoyed it even more than I thought I would.

It’s funny, engaging and covers words that don’t ordinarily appear in this sort of thing. I spent a lot of time smiling when I was reading it and laughed out loud several times. I highly recommend it!