This is the Allusion Next in which I, Helen Salzman, ask language where it thinks it's

going dress like that.

This is the last show of the first year of the Allusion Next.

Thanks a lot for joining me on the learning curve.

If this is your first Allusion Next, welcome.

Now go off and listen to some of the other episodes before returning to this one because

this one is deviating from the normal form and I wouldn't want your data to be inaccurate.

Today's show will feature a smattering of anecdotes that there wasn't room for in the

episodes before.

And I'll be tackling a few of the requests you've sent in over the year for word histories,

such as this one from John Mark in Oxford.

I was wondering whether you'd be willing to take on some meta-etomology in your podcast

and shed some light on the etymology of etymology.

As you wish, John Mark, not to be confused with entomology, the study of insects.

Etymology is from ancient Greek, etymon, which meant true or real, and logia, which meant

study.

So it's the study of the true sense of a word, which is at odds with a lot of etymological

theories, which are bollocks, such as, is it an acronym?

No, it's almost certainly not an acronym, especially if it's a pre-20th century word.

That's just not how words were formed.

Or does this seemingly innocuous commonplace word have horrible racist etymology?

Usually it's not the innocuous commonplace words which have the horrible racist etymologies.

...