# Mark Forsyth - The Etymologicon (Highlights)  ## Metadata **Review**:: [readwise.io](https://readwise.io/bookreview/57047327) **Source**:: #from/readwise #from/kindle **Zettel**:: #zettel/fleeting **Status**:: #x **Authors**:: [[Mark Forsyth]] **Full Title**:: The Etymologicon **Category**:: #books #readwise/books **Category Icon**:: 📚 **Highlighted**:: [[2026-01-11]] **Created**:: [[2026-01-17]] ## Highlights - That’s how the French played a game of chicken. The French, though, being French, called it a game of poule, which is French for chicken. And the chap who had won all the money had therefore won the jeu de poule. ([Location 138](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008EXNY5I&location=138)) ^969307579 - Take generous: the word originally meant well-born, and because it was obvious that well-bred people were magnanimous and peasants were stingy, it came to mean munificent. ([Location 153](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008EXNY5I&location=153)) ^969307580 - Eventually, a Frenchman named Lavoisier decided that the sort of air that produced water when it was burnt should be called the water-producer. Being a scientist, he of course dressed this up in Greek, and the Greek for water producer is hydro-gen. ([Location 163](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008EXNY5I&location=163)) ^969307581 - Argon is Greek for lazy.) ([Location 167](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008EXNY5I&location=167)) ^969307582 - What are testicles doing there? They are testifying to a man’s virility. Do you want to prove that you’re a real man? Well, your testicles will testify in your favour. ([Location 179](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008EXNY5I&location=179)) ^969307583 - And that’s why, if you look at the top right-hand corner of your computer keyboard, you will see two little codpieces [] lingering obscenely beside the letter P for pants. ([Location 229](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008EXNY5I&location=229)) ^970023083 - Panic is not a fear of everything; it is, in fact, the terror that the Greek god Pan, who rules the forests, is able to induce in anybody who takes a walk in the woods after dark. ([Location 259](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008EXNY5I&location=259)) ^970023084 - If you were naughty it used to mean that you were a no-human. It comes from exactly the same root as nought or nothing. Now it just means that you’re mischievous. ([Location 330](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008EXNY5I&location=330)) ^970201280 - Talking cold turkey was the bluntest, directest form of speech. ([Location 621](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008EXNY5I&location=621)) ^976753974 - By the same system, the old word crevis is now spelled and pronounced crayfish, even though it’s not very fishlike. ([Location 659](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008EXNY5I&location=659)) ^976753975 - The Greek for butterfly was psyche, and Psyche was the goddess of the soul. ([Location 694](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B008EXNY5I&location=694)) ^976753976