In this post we would like to present etymonline.com, an online dictionary of etymologies.
Etymologies are not definitions; they’re explanations of what our words meant and how they sounded 600 or 2,000 years ago.
For each term, you will find a date representing the earliest year for which there is a surviving written record of that word (in English, unless otherwise indicated). Dates around 1700 should be taken as approximate, since a word may have been used in conversation for hundreds of years before it turns up in a manuscript.
The author of this website is Douglas Harper an American historian, author, journalist and lecturer, and according to him “this is a never-ending project as people will continue to use words as they will, finding wider meanings for old words and coining new ones to fit new situations. In fact, this list is a testimony to that process.”
