Online Etymology Dictionary
The site is a map of the wheel-ruts of modern English. Etymologies are not definitions; they're explanations of what our words meant and how they sounded 600 or 2,000 years ago. The basic sources of this work are Weekley's "An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English," Klein's "A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language," "Oxford English Dictionary" (second edition), "Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology," Holthauzen's "Etymologisches Wörterbuch der Englischen Sprache," Ayto's "20th Century Words," and Chapman's "Dictionary of American Slang."
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