Mark Forsyth - The Etymologicon (2011)

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But Shakespeare never drank coffee. Nor did Julius Caesar, or Socrates. Alexander the Great conquered half the world without even a café latte to perk him up. The pyramids were designed and constructed without a whiff of a sniff of caffeine. Coffee was introduced to Europe only in 1615. The achievements of antiquity are quite enough to cow the modern human, but when you realize that they did it all without caffeine it becomes almost unbearable.

Mark Forsyth

Anyone who has ever taken out a mortgage will be unsurprised to learn that it is, literally, a /death pledge/.

Mark Forsyth

Freud said that everything was secretly sexual. But etymologists know that sex is secretly food.

Mark Forsyth