This book is a unique scholarly achievement–authoritative original scholarship designed to be a useful reference source for the general reader as well as for an important etymological resource for the expert. With over 3,000 entries, the Dictionary covers over 25,000 root, or basic, English words, detailing the derivation of each in clearly written passages that interweave thousands of linguistic and historical facts to explain where words originate, how their forms have changed in English, and how their meanings have developed over time.