Have You Ever Thought About Buying The Etymologicon?

if you do you will be able to look up the meaning of commonly used phrases and words,

like the term Gordon Brown made when he was heard calling voter Gillian Duffy a 'bigot' during last year's General Election, bigot – old English for 'by god', to describe someone who asserts their own saintliness, while being a hypocrite, perhaps some one should buy him a copy of it!


here are a few other origins of other words, through the grapevine – from the 'grapevine telegraph', a phrase which emerged during the American Civil War for an unofficial, word-of-mouth network along which news was passed, either because Confederate soldiers passed it on while drinking wine after dinner, or because slaves discussed it while picking grapes from vines,


Castor oil – originally the name of a liquid used as a laxative which was extracted from the glands of a beaver – or Castor, in Latin, it was not until the mid-18th century that it was discovered that the same effect could be got from the oil produced by the seeds of Ricinus communis, which became known as the castor oil plant,


finally, in a nutshell – Pliny, the Roman writer, claimed there was a copy of The Iliad so small it could fit inside a walnut shell, the book is yours for just £6.62 with free delivery in the UK!