Jul 15 2023 43 mins 3
Language is so personal and internal. It exists in your head. You can close
your eyes and plug your ears and not engage with the outside world at all, and
yet you still have language going on. So I think one of the things that
attracts people to [etymology] is, it’s discussing something that they
feel they have a part in.
Mark Sundaram is a medievalist
and linguist who specializes in the history of the English language. He’s the
co-host of the podcast The Endless Knot
and the main force behind the
Alliterative YouTube channel. Mark
has a PhD in Medieval Studies from the University of Toronto and teaches at
Laurentian University.
Aven McMaster is a Classicist
who studies Latin poetry and Roman social history. She is the co-host of the
podcast The Endless Knot Podcast and
does production work on the
Alliterative channel videos. Aven has
a PhD in Classics from the University of Toronto and taught at Thorneloe
University at Laurentian.
They join Chris and Suzanne to talk all about etymologies, dictionaries, and
etymological dictionaries. What pleasures are found in reading the dictionary?
Why are some people so compelled by etymologies? How do etymologies and puns
inform classical poetry?
Show Notes.
The Endless Knot on Twitter.
John Ayto: Dictionary of Word Origins.
The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology.
Paul Anthony Jones (Haggard Hawks on
Twitter): Why Is This A Question?
On Webster’s Third New International
Dictionary.
Ernest Weekley: The Romance of
Words.
Alliterative’s video on nation.
The etymology of feisty.
Ernest Klein: A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English
Language.
Anatoly Liberman: Word Origins and How We Know
Them.
Calvert Watkins: The American Dictionary of Indo-European
Roots.
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