Adrian Room tells us that there are 11 reasons why a word will change its meaning - but mainly words change as a result of transfers, weakening, adjustment and abstraction. Thus, in the 13th century, a "knave girl" was a "boy", and girl simply meant child. Still in the 13th century, an "inn" was a person's home, and "with" (as in "with a friend") meant "against". We discover that "lingerie" was any clothing made out of linen, "list" was a band or strip of material, and a "pupil" was an orphan child. Room has collected about 1,300 common words that have changed meaning, and where possible he attempts to explain why the change occurred. The book includes illustrative historical quotes and traces the history of a word to its present day. Politically correct language, it seems, has been with us for centuries. A wordsmith's delight.

Adrian Room tells us that there are 11 reasons why a word will change its meaning - but mainly words change as a result of transfers, weakening, adjustment and abstraction. Thus, in the 13th century, a "knave girl" was a "boy", and girl simply meant child. Still in the 13th century, an "inn" was a person's home, and "with" (as in "with a friend") meant "against". We discover that "lingerie" was any clothing made out of linen, "list" was a band or strip of material, and a "pupil" was an orphan child. Room has collected about 1,300 common words that have changed meaning, and where possible he attempts to explain why the change occurred. The book includes illustrative historical quotes and traces the history of a word to its present day. A wordsmith's delight.

This is a supurb dictionary of Greek, Roman, and other gods and goddesses that leaves nothing out. Everything from Abas to Zeuxippe! If want to know more about any character from classical mythology, it's in here. I am currently writing a book of my own, for which this book proved an indispensible resource.

I'd have given this book five stars if it had been written for American audiences. Its full of english words and phrases, but a lot of them originated in Britain after the revolution, so did not make it across the Atlantic.

Even so, this is an excellent reference, explaining the origins of words and phrases we are so accustomed to hearing that we rarely stop to wonder why they are used. I got a copy for myself, and then another as a gift for a trivia-loving sister-in-law.

Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable is, without question, a wonderful reference book. All reviews agree that it's unique in scope and content. Read the other reviews for details. I can't really add anything there.

But interestingly, no one focuses on what a great read this book is. I love it because I can just pick it up, open the book to any page at random, and instantly lose myself in the contents of the pages. It's delightful in that you never know what you'll learn (but you always learn something interesting), and you can read as much or as little as you wish, depending on your time or interest. Later on, you can pick up where you left off, or just flip the pages to some other random place in the book

We jokingly refer to it as the world's best "bathroom book."

So, by all means use it as a reference, but don't stop there - read it!

This book is simply one of the best dictionaries of its kind ever to have been published, and, I might add, Brewer's work has already become a classic. It contains a wealth of entries from divers areas, including mythology, history, classics, language, as well as common sayings, phrases and legends. Useful as a reference though it is, this dictionary is eminently suited to a casual browse, which one will invariably find interesting, entertaining and edifying, containing many obscure tidbits of trivia that catches one's eyes. This edition, unfortunately, omits a few entries that were present in previous editions, and this is a sad loss, but, all in all, the book is worth every penny, and is a valuable reference on anyone's bookshelf, especially to those with literary pretensions.

If you are at all interested in toponomy (etymology of place names), you will be fascinated with this book. You will learn, for example, the difference between the seemingly identical endings to the city names "Magnitogorsk" and "Stalinogorsk". It tells you the common basis of the river names Don, Dnieper, Dniester, and throws in the Danube to boot. It distinguishes between Russian and non-Russian names. It gives you previous names: e.g. Ekaterinburg was Sverdlovsk. This last point alone probably makes it worth the price, so much having changed since the breakup of the USSR.

With "Trade Name Origins" Adrian Room delivers another fine work of lexicography and onomastics. However, be forewarned: as he is an Englishman, this work has much stronger coverage of British companies than of companies based in the U.S., Japan, and Europe (though the major ones are covered, e.g. Coke, Sony, Agfa). Also, this is a reprinting of the 1982 edition, not a new edition, so there is no mention of companies formed after that date. This is apparently the only dictionary of this sort out there, though, so even if it weren't up to Room's usual high standard it would still be a valuable addition to your reference shelf.

This is a nice etymological dictionary of Greco-Roman myths. However all Greek proper nouns are totally latinized and we can not find any Greek alphabet-spelling in the book.It is incredible for us Japanese that somebody explains about Greek etymology without indicating original Greek orthography.I suppose the author wanted to teach schoolboys and girls the origins of classical names.So I recommend this dictionary for young students and beginners on Greek-Roman mythology.

Some of the entries are merely incomplete, while others are inaccurate. The title "All the President's Men" is attributed to a statement by one of Nixon's henchmen, and that is true, but Adrian Room neglects to explain that the title is a play upon "All the King's Men", the roman a clef by Robert Penn Warren about the rise and fall of the corrupt Louisiana governor Huey P. Long, and of course Warren's title was taken from the nursery rhyme about Humpty Dumpty and his "great fall". Woodward & Bernstein would not have called their book "All the President's Men" if it were not for these associations.

Adrian Room is completely mistaken about the origin of Isaac Asimov's "The Gods Themselves", citing a line from King Lear, Act V, scene iii: "Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia, the gods themselves throw incense." Actually, Asimov himself quotes Friedrich Schiller: "Against stupidity the gods themselves struggle in vain", and the three parts of "The Gods Themselves" are actually entitled "Against Stupidity", "The Gods Themselves", and "Struggle in Vain". Clearly Adrian Room did not open Asimov's book, and there are so many careless errors of this kind that his own book is unreliable and nearly useless.