The Wordspotter's Guide

Olivia Swarthout, creator of the viral sensation Weird Medieval Guys, turns her idiosyncratic and humorous eye to the fascinating roots of the English language. Here, she introduces readers to wordspotting, a hobby for those who love words and their peculiarities, origins and histories. From the seemingly modern 'unfriend' - which dates back to the seventeenth century - to the revelation that the leotard was named after its inventor Jules Léotard, The Wordspotter's Guide brims with fascinating linguistic tidbits alongside advice and techniques for detecting the bizarre and unlikely commonalities between words and their meanings. An invitation to pay better attention to words and their stories, this etymological romp will bring out the wordspotter in everyone.

Olivia Swarthout is a German-American author from Montana, USA who currently resides in London. A lifelong aficionado for all things strange and obscure, Olivia's work centres around unearthing the most unexpected and entertaining stories from the annals of human history. In so doing, she hopes to help her audience connect with the distant past and share in her sense of kinship with its inhabitants - who were, after all, not so different from us. Olivia is also the author of Weird Medieval Guys, a love letter to the creativity, hilarity, and timeless appeal of art from the Middle Ages. Olivia is a name that arose as a variation of the Latin Oliva, meaning "olive", popularised in the English-speaking world by the heroine of William Shakespeare's play, Twelfth Night. Swarthout is a surname of Middle Dutch origin that roughly translates to "Black Forest." It probably originated near a Frisian forest of the same name, but neither the woods nor their inhabitants are around to say for sure.