Pedigree: The Origins of Words from Nature

Collins New Naturalist #56

by Stephen Potter

320 Pages

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Stephen Meredith Potter was a British author and broadcaster. He popularised the term 'Gamemanship'.

Reviews

[Mark Isaak · Rating 4 out of 5]

The authors (Stephen Potter and Laurens Sargent) give brief stories of word origins. The subtitle promises "of words from nature", and indeed the first few chapters focus on names of plants and animals, but names from nature show up too, such as "grenade" (from 'gran', seed); other words included (e.g. "delirious", from Latin for "out of the furrow" or "not in a straight line") are only loosely nature words. The title refers to the origin of "pedigree", literally "foot of a crane", because genealogies commonly included a symbol with that shape. Many other etymologies are just as interesting. Origins of place names in Great Britain are also included; not being English, I did not find those quite so interesting.

The style is chatty, with an organization that feels more stream-of-consciousness than data driven. The stories are brief; sometimes connections are abbreviated or only alluded to. But there is a lot of material for word lovers here; the index has over 2000 general entries plus another 180 or so place names.