Useless Etymology: Offbeat Word Origins for Curious Minds

This addictive compendium of lexical lore from podcaster and social media personality Zafarris (Words from Hell) aims to give readers “something to laugh or sigh or rage at on every page.” Some of her etymological origin stories are silly, others enthralling, and still others just plain surprising, like that of trivia, which comes from a Latin word meaning “a place where three roads meet”; in the Holy Roman Empire, Zafarris explains, such three-way intersections were places where people hung out making small talk about matters trivial. Zafarris’s account is full of such marvelous facts—but not factoids, she’s careful to point out, a term which was coined by Norman Mailer to denote modern journalism’s proliferation of sound bites and platitudes that actually have no basis in reality. “Etymology gives you superpowers,” she quips, and readers may very well feel a sense of superhuman enlightenment while processing the fact that which was originally a compound word (the Old English for “why like”). After all, Zafarris writes, “the more you learn, the less pedantic you become and the more you revel in the glorious, rip-roaring chaos of iterative creativity.” Word lovers will adore Zafarris’s wit and whimsy. (Oct.)