Two Questions for Journalist

George Thompson george.thompson at NYU.EDU
Thu Jan 10 03:13:15 UTC 2013


So, Fred, what were your answers to these questions?  And do you know what
use she has made of your help?

The material recently shared with us about "scallywag" would have been a
splendid answer to question #2.

GAT

On Fri, Dec 14, 2012 at 12:43 PM, Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu>wrote:

> What are examples in recent times of important discoveries about etymology
> or word-origins or phrase-origins or quotation-origins being made "the
> old-fashioned way," i.e., using methods other than searching online
> databases?
>
> Now that "O.K." and arguably "the whole nine yards" have had their
> derivations uncovered, what are the other most significant or most
> interesting words or phrases with mysterious etymologies?
>


GAT

--
George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.

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