Etymology Diarmuid Ó Muirithe characterises himself as "a harmless old drudge" and certainly some people might view an interest in etymology, the study of words and their origins, as a hobby more anoraky than train-spotting.
But Words, Words, Words, a collection of his columns from The Oldie magazine, despite their sweetly old-fashioned tone, soon sets you thinking about the erudition of their author and the sheer vivacity of human linguistic expression, both verbal and literary, over many centuries.
Ó Muirithe, a former lecturer in Irish at UCD and the author of A Dictionary of Anglo-Irish (2000), operates in his Oldie column as a sort of agony aunt of words. Readers from all over Britain and Ireland send him queries about various words, often springing from local dialects, and beyond the reach of OED and he weaves them into columns which range in topic from why Travellers were called "knackers" ("knacker" was a word for saddler) to how some people who use the word ax for ask aren't necessarily wrong (it comes directly from the Old English ácsian, to ask) or how lá bog, or soft day, isn't "as Irish as a banshee's bum" or at least not exclusively so because, Ó Muirithe informs us, in an English text from the 13th century a scribe states: "This weder is softe, And this king hard."
Many of the words and phrases Ó Muirithe writes about are either no longer in common currency or are associated with trades and crafts no longer practiced: a badger was the keeper of a small shop or a travelling dealer; it's mildering, meaning it's raining, comes from the milling term milder, meaning a quantity of corn, and a kickshaw, referring to a knick-knack, comes from a corruption of the French quelque-chose.
One wonders if Diarmuid Ó Muirithe lives in a house filled with reference works and dictionaries ranging from Old Norse, Old English, Old French to Latin and Greek or if he uses technology or card indexes to research and store his word searches. Either way, the width and wit of his erudition is impressive and lightly carried. He can give the meaning of the long obsolete words and their journeys through many languages, and buttresses his findings with a quote using the word from Joyce or Shakespeare or Chaucer or Langland.
Only one niggle; Words, Words, Words has no glossary of words referred to in the collected columns - a frustrating shortcoming in a book which seeks to persuade us of the joys of etymology.
Yvonne Nolan is a freelance TV producer, journalist and critic
Words, Words, Words: Houghmagandie, Knockers, Trolleys & Others By Diarmuid Ó Muirithe Lilliput Press, 171pp. €9.99