Mostly a joke, but wouldn’t it be cool to have the ultimate “origin of” directory that nobody could dispute? Is Wikipedia it these days? Were any of those heavy books in pre-Internet days really all that well-researched? How many etymology references are just somebody’s WAG?
As as user of such reference material, rate yourself on how much you believe their findings to be beyond dispute:
- less than 10% sure
- 10-25% sure
- 25-50% sure
- 50-75 % sure
- 75-90 % sure
- 100% dead certain
I’m at 4, just because that’s pretty much how I relate to opinions in general.