Most of us have grown up with Scrooge’s Christmas Eve escapades. We know the plot, the catch phrases, the every “bah, humbugs!” like the back of our hands. The names Ebenezer, Jacob Marley and Bob Cratchit are now as deeply familiar to us as Santa, Rudolph, and Frosty. We know it all. Or do we? What is it about those Victorian names that haunt our yuletide imagination? What are they hiding about the characters we re-invite into our homes every year? And what, moreover, do they say about Dickens’ supposedly simple tale that may not be so simple after all?

Rita Mae Brown said: "Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going."

I especially like the etymology for 'sleight', as in 'sleight of hand' (no. 4 on the list). Many of these are great. Do wish Mental Floss would give their source(s) for their info, however.

This was fun to read — not only does Liberman lay out very sound methods for determining the histories of words, with occasional appropriate ridicule of the storytelling that some etymologists have engaged in, but he peppers his prose with wordplay and wit. He introduces some ideas that were a bit unexpected to me. For example, he thinks the role of "sound symbolism" is quite important — that is, people either alter existing words or create ones with an appropriate sound to the subject, like pig, pug, pod, pad, etc. being appropriate to something "swollen". Also, his idea of etymology hopes to get to the origin of the word — either when it was coined or when it split off from related words in a sort of speciation event. I hadn't considered being that daring. But he's appropriately cautious about the subject of the origin of language itself, of course.