This richly illustrated book will open to young readers the fascinating world of the English language, will acquaint with the history of the origin of individual words and their spelling, expand and enrich pupils' vocabulary.This book will become an indispensable assistant for pupils studying English language.

album

The Romans called the white tablet on which edicts were written an album, from the Latin albus, “white.” In English album came to mean any empty book for entering or storing things, especially photographs, only the wedding album still being traditionally white. A record album, a collection of songs, derives from the same root.

Book

 Smooth- skinned beech trees have always been the favorite of lovers carving their names or initials inside a heart. The outer bark of the beech and slabs of its thin, inner bark were also the first writing materials used by Anglo- Saxon scribes. Saxons called the beech the boc and also applied this name to their bound writings made from slabs of beech, the word becoming book after many centuries of spelling changes.

cabbage

Ask for a head of cabbage and you are repeating yourself, for cabbage means “head,” the name of the vegetable deriving from the Old French caboce, “swollen head.” Cabbage, probably the most ancient of vegetables, has been cultivated for more than 4,000 years. In Greek mythology it is said to have sprung from sweat on the head of Jupiter. The Greeks also believed that eating it cured baldness.

candy

We know that candy of various kinds has been around for at least 4,000 years and that there are at least 2,000 varieties of it available today. It was probably the Greeks who brought the word candy into the language. It seems that a favorite of the troops of Alexander the Great was a Persian delicacy called kand—a sweet reed garnished with honey, spices, and coloring.

doctor

Doctor comes ultimately from the Latin "doctor",meaning teacher, passing into English from the Old French “docteur” meaning the same. 

ear

Though ears of corn grow on the side of the corn plant and might suggest the ears that are organs of hearing, the two words are historically unrelated. The ear used for hearing comes to us from the Latin “aurus”, meaning the same, while the ear of corn comes from the Latin “aucus”, husk. Even traced back to their ultimate roots, the two words have different etymological origins. Their similarity is purely coincidental.

farm

The Anglo- Saxon feorm, which meant both food and hospitality, is the ultimate source of the word farm. By the Middle Ages "feorm" had changed to "ferme", which became the word for the food tenants paid their landlords as rent. Eventually the name for this rent was applied to the land that had produced it, the ferme or farm, as it was later called.

garage

A garage originally was a place to moor a boat, not

park a car. Garage is an early- 19th- century French word meaning “a place where one docks.” The French began to use garage for “a place to keep a vehicle in” when the automobile became popular early in the 20th century and the English soon borrowed the word from them.

garlic

garlic takes its name from the Old English “garleac”. The Romans believed garlic contained magical powers and hung it over their doors to ward off witches

handball

The name of this popular sport can be traced back to 15th- century England, but it originated in Ireland over four centuries earlier and was known as the game of fives for the five fingers of the hands used in it. Handball became popular in America in about 1882, when it is said to have been introduced by Irish immigrant Phil Casey in Brooklyn, New York.

iris

Iris, the Greek goddess of the rainbow, gives her name to the colored portion of the eye called the iris and the iris flower, which has varieties in all the colors of the rainbow. Orris root is a powder used in perfumes and other products that is made from the roots of certain irises.

jumper

Only in recent times has the jumper become a woman’s garment. Originally it was a coarse canvas shirt reaching to the hips that was worn by sailors. The word derives from jump, for a short coat men wore in the 18th century.

koala

The name of the arboreal marsupial animal native to Australia is first recorded in 1808. The furry, gray bearlike creature with huge ears is also, appropriately, called the Australian bear. Koala itself was borrowed from the aboriginal name of the small sluggish animal. 

lemon

Lemons were probably initially grown in the Middle East, for lemon is first recorded as the Persian and Arabic word limun, which became the Old French limon. Limon passed into English when the French exported the fruit to England, and by the mid- 17th century the fruit was being called the lemon there.

mango

The mango is one of the most important of tropical

fruits. Mango varieties number in the hundreds. The delectable fruit, whose name derives from the Portuguese manga,is grown in the American South, but these varieties can’t be compared to tropical ones in taste.  

nectarine

This silky smooth- skinned fruit is a mutation of the peach and often grows on the same tree. Cultivated for thousands of years, the Queen of Peaches takes its name from the Greek nekter, the drink of the gods.