etymologist

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

As the etymologist Anatoly Liberman has pointed out, in its earliest forms, haga, hegg and hegge, the word meant “enclosure” or “yard,” especially the residence of a feudal lord.

From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 21, 2026

In 1934, Allen Walker Read, an etymologist and lexicographer, laid out the history of the word that, then, had “the deepest stigma of any in the language.”

From New York Times • Apr. 30, 2021

John Kelly, an etymologist and senior research editor at Dictionary.com, wrote in a 2017 post on his etymology website, Mashed Radish.

From Seattle Times • Dec. 18, 2019

“I make it sound very scholarly,” says Merriam etymologist Jim Rader, a onetime Slavic linguistics graduate student who writes the historical notes.

From Slate • Jan. 12, 2015

Sometimes also his zeal as an etymologist misled him, as in his famous attempt to make the word bridegroom more conformable to its supposed Anglo-Saxon root and its modern Teutonic congeners.

From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 31, May, 1860 by Various