David WiltonWord Myths: Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends

Word Myths is an amusing, lighthearted, fun little book. Wilton writes in friendly, conversational prose. I'm relieved to find out that President Kennedy never declared himself a jelly donut. I'm disappointed that Ring Around the Rosie does not stem from the plague and that my mom told me SOS means save our ship. I laughed when I read the myth that OK stands for Old Kinderhook, aka Martin Van Buren. Van Buren's nickname was the Little Magician. But OK does stand for Old Kinderhook, aka Marin Van Buren! That and something else too. I'm not sure what book some other reviewers read. Word Myths is not dry and academic. I spotted no grammatical errors, and I know grammar. It grew stale in just 200 pages? That says something, but not about the book. Word Myths is obviously meant for a general audience, ordinary persons who stumble across the book and are curious. If over half of the references are to the Oxford English Dictionary, what about those of us who lack a subscription? What about the other nearly half? To end on a positive note, imagine inventing the condom. You've got fun times ahead.

I got this as a gift for my significant other. He was delighted at first because he is a word lover. But he says it concentrates too much on the myths and not enough on the true meaning or derivations. Oh well - that is theTitle. When he's finished I think I'll give it to my super bright 15 year old grandson, another word lover. When he was little he used to "read" the dictionary, page by page.

I admit to being a word geek. I love the picky nonsense of grammar (and the huge fights that result from it) but most of all, I love a good etymology. Mr. Wilton has done his homework here and it shows. His history is good and his reasoning quite persuasive. I don't know that I've stayed up til the wee smalls reading the origins of common words and phrases very often, but it was definitely worth it for this book. Great fun even for the non-geeky and the simply curious.

Got this as the Kindle sample, and became so hooked I went for the whole thing. After the second time I brought up something explored in this book in everyday conversation, I knew it was worth buying.The most interesting aspect, to me, was seeing how having old media (and especially newspapers) digitized into searchable format has significantly changed the currently accepted origins of words and phrases.Easy to pick up and put down as a background book, while maintaining overall themes through the chapters.

Starts off interesting, but eventually grows boring, as he shoots down word-myth after word-myth using essentially the same argument each time -- the word appears in the record before the story in the myth allegedly took place. Even more disappointing is the realization that over half of his supporting citations are to the Oxford English Dictionary, which seems rather lazy.

funny, informative, worth reading. This is not an in depth treatise on linguistics, just a straight forward look at the way information is passed on, and how one mis-appropriated reference can affect the life of a piece of information.

This book is a handy, fun reference to discovering the entomology of words and phrases we use all the time.

Enjoyed this very much and found it very easy to comprehend.

I had hoped to be entertained by this book but I found it a bit dry and academic

Better written in other books

WELL RESEARCHED INTERESTING AND INFORMATIVE

a bit of fluff - quite entertaining