‘What, what, what,’ said my husband, as if he had bought up a job lot of whats and wanted to use them up before the hot weather spoilt them. He was provoked by my having read out a sentence by W.W. Skeat: ‘Argosy is not really of Slavonic origin.’ Skeat (1835–1912) had meant to go into the Church, but an affliction of the throat cut that short. A lectureship in mathematics at Christ’s College, Cambridge ‘left him ample leisure’. He edited Langland and Chaucer in several volumes and made an etymological dictionary. In analysing a difficult word, he allowed three hours: ‘During that time I made the best I could of it and then let it go.’
In his Principles of English Etymology (Second Series, 1891) he included a list of words of Slavonic origin, including plough, which is startling enough, and argosy. The latter, he noted, came from Ragusa in Dalmatia.
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