2107 Curious Word Origins, Sayings & Expressions from White Elephants to a Song & Dance by Funk, Charles Earle - 1993

New York: Galahad Books, 1993. First Galahad Edition. Hardcover. Fine copy in near fine dust jacket with light edgewear; o/w dust jacket is clean and free of creases and tears; books is clean and unmarked; pages are bright and free of creases; a gently used copy./near fine. Octavo in blue and white board in tan dust jacket; b&w illus.; 988 pp., 24 cm. In English. || Abstract: "This enormous collection of almost one thousand pages contains the four previously published bestselling titles, A HOG ON ICE, THEREBY HANGS A TALE, HEAVENS TO BETSY! and HORSEFEATHERS. Dr. Funk has taken... over 2000... curious words, expressions and sayings that we use in our daily speech and traced them back through the years to find their amusing, practical an dsurprising origins." --jacket flap; "This volume contains entertaining trivia about clichés, word origins, historic events, classical literature, and frontier humor used in the English language. It reveals the sometimes surprising, often amusing, and always fascinating roots of more than 2,000 vernacular words and expressions. From "kangaroo court" to "one-horse town", from "face the music" to "hocus-pocus," it tells the stories of hundreds of these sayings and the circumstances that brought them into our everyday speech."
SUBJECT(S)
Descriptor: English language -- Terms and phrases.
English language -- Etymology.