Uncomplimentary Words for an Old Man
Walter Nash, 5 March 1987
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology
edited by T.F. Hoad.
Oxford, 552 pp., £12.95, May 1986,9780198611820 Show More
edited by T.F. Hoad.
Oxford, 552 pp., £12.95, May 1986,
Dictionary of Changes in Meaning
by Adrian Room.
Routledge, 292 pp., £14.95, May 1986,0 7102 0341 1 Show More
by Adrian Room.
Routledge, 292 pp., £14.95, May 1986,
The Story of English
by Robert McCrum, William Cran and Robert McNeil.
Faber/BBC, 384 pp., £14.95, September 1986,0 563 20247 5 Show More
by Robert McCrum, William Cran and Robert McNeil.
Faber/BBC, 384 pp., £14.95, September 1986,
Dictionary of American Regional English. Vol. I: Introduction and A-C
edited by Frederic Cassidy.
Harvard, 903 pp., $60, July 1985,0 674 20511 1 Show More
edited by Frederic Cassidy.
Harvard, 903 pp., $60, July 1985,
“... of Middle High German buobe and Dutch boef. Current wisdom, however, concisely expounded by Dr Hoad, deems it probably an aphetic form (aphesis is what makes esquire into squire, or because into ’cause) of a conjectural past participle of an Old French verb embuier, ‘to fetter’; from an unattested Latin imboiare, based on boia, ‘a ... ”
