Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language

This book is a great read. I took it with me on a couple of long plane rides, and it was perfect. In addition to being humorous and informative, it also solved several long-standing debates for me. This has gone to the top of my list of gifts for friends that are always a challange to pick the right gift for. I can't image anyone not finding it a real pleasure, and a keeper.

This book was both interesting and fun to read. Anyone interested in the etymology of words and phrases will enjoy this book. One might be dismayed at some of the things "they" learn, but that only underlines one of the author's points: English evolves, for better or for worse.

Being a proper grammarian or wordsmith is difficult. Sometimes one needs to stick to ones guns and other times one needs to go with the flow of the vox populi. Ms. O'Connor covers words, phrases, and grammar with humor. A must read for those logophiles.

It has never been wrong to "split" an infinitive; George Washington contributed the words "bakery" and "ravine" to the English language, and Abraham Lincoln gave us "relocate"; in the heyday of Hollywood, Gene Flack was a publicity agent. Those interesting and disparate tidbits of information can signal only one thing: that grammar sleuths Patricia T. O'Conner and her husband, Stewart Kellerman - the Nora and Nick Charles of etymology - are gleefully back on the case. Now, I don't know if their choice of pet runs to the wire fox terrier, or if the dry martini is their cocktail of choice, but O'Conner and Kellerman certainly seem every bit as witty, charming and erudite as their celluloid equivalents embodied by stars Myrna Loy and William Powell in a series of popular movies in the 1930s and '40s. But whereas Loy and Powell treated us to their big-screen antics in the "Thin Man" movies, the new collaboration by O'Conner and Kellerman is the book "Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language." The book is chock-full of interesting information. For example, the expression "call a spade a spade" had its roots (so to speak) in a Greek expression that should have been rendered as "call a trough a trough," except that it was mistranslated back in the Renaissance. "Deadline" started out as a 4-foot-high fence marking the no-man's-land inside the walls of the Confederate prisoner-of-war camp in Andersonville, Ga. And, no, the Victorian-era plumbing magnate Thomas Crapper did not lend his unfortunate family moniker to the porcelain throne. The authors start out with a bang, in the early chapters. After noting that there are two main strains of the English language -- British English and American English - O'Conner and Kellerman then carefully make their case that American English is actually truer to the original. Ever wondered why there sometimes is a preferred British spelling of a word that is different from the preferred American spelling? "Blame two cranky old men - Noah Webster and Samuel Johnson," each of whom wrote an influential dictionary. As for the proliferation of grammar rules that drive us crazy, the authors finger "overzealous Latinists in a misguided attempt to force English to play by the rules of Latin." And it was the 18th-century Anglican Bishop Robert Lowth who unilaterally outlawed the double negative and ending a sentence with a preposition. All of the information in the book is solid, but the presentation is never dry. There is a deliciously ribald anecdote, for example, that explains how the genteel and proper Robert Browning happened to employ a particularly piquant four-letter word in one of his poems. And, like colorful nonpareils atop a cupcake, the text is sprinkled with a tasty array of pop culture references, when using them can help the authors get across a point: from long-gone actor Georgie Jessel to erstwhile "American Idol" judge Paula Abdul; Miss Grundy of Archie comics fame to Maynard G. Krebs, the beatnik character on the early-`60s sitcom "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis"; the Harold Arlen-Ira Gershwin classic "The Man That Got Away" to "The Invisible Shrinking Man"; Harry Potter. My particular favorite is this: "Femella was strictly a female female," which positively sings. Still, the book is not without heft when it's needed, including nods to Lindley Murray, a noted grammarian of the 1800s, as well as to Sidney Morgenbesser. (Ms. O'Conner was, after all, a philosophy major at Grinnell College.) Finally, like the aforementioned Nick and Nora Charles, the authors of "Origins of the Specious" could not be more generous of spirit, liberally crediting other grammarians throughout the book, and also ending with a 39-page section of Notes citing sources chapter and verse. "Origins of the Specious" is a worthy follow-up to Ms. O'Conner's earlier works "Woe Is I" and "Words Fail Me," and to the O'Conner-Kellerman collaboration, "You Send Me." It belongs on the bookshelf of anyone who, well, regularly uses the English language. No, not the bookshelf: on the nightstand or coffee table, and certainly the Christmas gift list.

This is a quick romp through some entertaining philology! I enjoy O'Conner's light prose style, her brief summaries of some thorny language questions, and her willingness to accept recent usages and changes. If you enjoy learning more about our rich and quirky language, this is a great book.