Dog Days and Dandelions: A Lively Guide to the Animal Meanings Behind Everyday Words

There are mice in your muscles, and blackbirds in your merlot. Behind adulation is a dog's wagging tail. Peculiar houses a herd of cattle. Grubby is crawling with bugs. Wordhound Martha Barnette collects more than 300 common (and a few not-so-common) words that have surprising animal roots. Tracing word origins back to ancient Greek and Latin as well as to European roots and American slang, the entries offer a guided tour through literature, science, folklore, politics, and more—with a wilderness of animal meanings at every turn.

For fledgling word sleuths as well as those who fawn over etymologies, this is a delightful smorgasbord for writers, students, and word lovers.

"In this zoological tour of the beastly backgrounds behind common phrases such as swan song and rare words such as snollygoster , Barnette sheds new light on both everyday and esoteric language . . . Barnette's etymological sleuthing, itself a word of animal derivation, is as educational as it is engrossing." — Booklist

"Arranged alphabetically, the 300-plus entries make for good browsing, and readers with a penchant for odd and underused words, such as myrmidon (an unprincipled lackey) and musteline (resembling a weasel) will find them aplenty here." — Publishers Weekly