In this entertaining and informative book Linda and Roger Flavell identify the origin of, and provide the explanation for, several hundred of the most popular words and phrases in English.

Their compilation is arranged chronologically and covers almost a millennium, from the Norman conquest to the present day. This is the kind of popular dictionary which can be read with pleasure from cover to cover or merely dipped into for reference and information.

It is both fascinating and illuminating to learn the provenance of phrases such as 'by hook or by crook', which derives from the medieval right to gather firewood; to discover that 'warts and all' comes from the instructions which Oliver Cromwell gave to his portrait painter Peter Lely; or to find that 'the cat's whiskers' emanates from the name given to a thin wire used in early America radio receivers.

Equally, there turn out to be intriguing and amusing beginnings to hosts of words which pass our lips everyday. A 'plumber', for example takes his or her name from the Latin word for lead, from which pipes have been made since the middle ages; the word 'refugee' entered the English language from French after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685; the verb 'to galvanise' derives from Luigi Galvani, the Italian anatomist whose late eighteenth-century experiments on frogs led much later to the invention of the electrical battery; and 'to brainwash' entered common parlance during the Korean War.

By linking these words and phrases to the events, individuals and processes which brought them into being and gave them vogue, the Flavells have given us a most enjoyable guide to the history of our linguistic currency.