Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology: Scholarly and Accessible ― Over 21,000 Word Origins Without Abbreviations or Jargon

This book covers wide range of root words and language areas. It is very informative.

What surprised me was the choice of paper used in printing this book and the quality of that paper! It’s been a very pleasant experience using this book. And, initially I wasn’t welcoming of the “lengthy” details into etymology of different senses of the same word, but as I kept using this book for derivation lookup, I eventually became very thankful of the details provided. Love it, love it, love it!!

I rely on this book especially when working on legal documents. This was an excellent investment and addition to my home library.

Well made and substantial, as fits a reference book. "Concise" is correct, but there's still a lot if information. It's not a "dictionary, " having little info on pronunciation and fairly sparse on definitions and forms. What it concentrates on is derivations. These are short, but useful. Very little slang or vulgarity. Nobody will mistake this for the Oxford English Dictionary, but as a desktop reference, it's handy and helpful.

ALWAYS WANTED THIS BOOK, GREAT PRICE, RECEIVED IN 5 DAYS IN JAMAICA

Great Book, glad I purchased it.

This book is amazing. I have seen several of these books and thought about this one, so I took the plunge and purchased it. And i am so glad I did it gives excellent reference points to dates, original language and some other identifiers. Great Book!

Love it , and is big and beautiful

Excellent for reference.

An excellent and engrossing reference for word nerds.

There's lots that's good about this book, but it's missing some important words, i.e. almost all the swear words, and words that have been used as racial slurs or pejorative terms for groups of people. Whoever made the decision about which words to include took a high-brow view of language and failed to include a lot of important word history. I wish I'd taken more time to consider that this edition was last updated in 1995. Language & attitudes can change a lot over the course of 25 years.

While the content of this book is what I was looking for, the paper and the binding are very poor quality. The paper is one step above newspaper. I paid fifty dollars for this book and expected a Collins Reference book to be made to last. Disappointed.