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Summary: Delightful and Enlightening
Review: Anyone interested in words will find this book to be delightful and enlightening. Stewart Edelstein has taken many unlikely pairs of words and traces them back to reveal their common, often surprising roots. For example, he pairs "gazebo" and "placebo." A gazebo is a structure, he explains, which affords an enjoyable view. A placebo is a substance with no real effect. What do these words have in common? Expectation, we learn. Then we learn about the history and the early recorded uses of the words. The book is filled with discussions of such "dubious doublets"-- which provides the book's title-- from "aardvark" and "procelain" to "canary" and "cynic" to "salacious" and "salmon" to "dentist" and "dandelion," and many, many more. Dubious Doublets is a delightful read, filled with erudition and humor. And it is accessible to people who, like me, have never really studied word origins. It is beautifully and humorously illustrated. It would make a fine gift for writers, people interested in language, or people who enjoy words games. It can be read in small doses or in large portions, depending on one's mood. I heartily recommend it.
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Summary: Edelstein serves up a feast of wordplay for us all
Review: I got this book at a reading by the author, whose enthusiasm for his subjecct was infectious. I was also enchanted by James Grashow's whimsical woodcut illustration on the cover--a mauve hippopotomus doing a feathery fan dance. The illustrations beckon us into Edelstein's etymological digs into the shared parentage of strange doublets--hippopotomus and feather being just two. Both words stem from the Indo-European #pet- (as well as the suffixed form "pet-ra,")meaning "to rush, fly." With a light touch, Edelstein flies through feather's line derived from the Greek "pteron" (feather or wing) through the Jurassic Age archeopteryx, pen (as in,quill), penne (pasta shaped like a quill); then rushes us on to pinnacle, panache, petulant, impetus, perpetual, compete, repeat, appetite, and get this, symptom. But, he asks, "how does the massive, slow-moving hippopotamus, which has absolutely no sense of panache and certainly can't fly, join the family of rushing and flying words? The answer is not in the 'hippo' but in the rushing water where it thrives. Greek 'potamos' means 'river,' originally 'rushing water.' Greek 'hippos' means 'horse.' Literally, a hippopotamus is a 'horse in rushing water.' Hippos rarely wander far from water, where they feed on water plants and share vegetation, feel buoyant, and stay cool."All this information in a single page of text! But the book is not just a trip through the meandering geography of our language. Edelstein has unpacked th treasures words have gleaned from their travels, and he entertains us with their tales. Think of gods, muses, royalty, clergy, soldiers, maids, barbarians, Romans, Greeks, French, Germans,Americans all sharing a common table, swapping stories, jokes and wordplay and you get some idea of this book. It's rich Epicurean fare packaged as small tastes--tapas, perhaps. And, it is a comfortable book, cozy in the hands with a soft cover; light enough to carry in a backpack or purse (which I do); with clear operating instructions (doublets are in alpha order). Erudite but friendly, Edelstein's Dubious Doublets might be construed as Pooh's take on the Oxford English Dictionary. For me, it's become a pal.5 Allison Tracy, Western Massachusetts
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