Evan Morris: The Word Detective : Solving the Mysteries Behind Those Pesky Words and Phrases

The Word Detective is Evan Morris' newspaper column and web site, devoted to finding out where different words and phrases originate. This book is a collection of his columns, but basically reads like a dictionary of curious sayings.

Morris has a light, humorous tone, which makes reading this book a fun experience. Well, if you read through the book at one sitting, you'll probably get a bit tired of his mock replies, followed by "just kidding, here's the real thing". Still, I like his style.

What comes to the content, the book is indeed a nice collection of strange words and phrases, explained usually in a rather satisfying way. Any etymology fans should definitely read this book, unless they've been closely following Morris' column and web site. [ The Word Detective: Solving the Mysteries Behind Those Pesky Phrases at Amazon.co.uk ] [ The Word Detective at LibraryThing ]