Almost exactly a century ago etymological research reached its all-time peak of appeal and recognition, at several levels of intellectual life. The legitimacy and even desirability of etymological inquiries went unchallenged in practically all advanced countries, as did the inclusion of etymology in the ensemble of historico-linguistic disciplines. Ambitious scholars made a point of their ability to engage in etymologizing, while editors of respected learned journals, usually characterized as ‘philological’, were only too eager to reserve a prominent section of each number for brief, pungent discussions of this kind. Earlier pronouncements of the ‘pre-scientific’ era were mentioned, at best, in more or less casual manner and, not infrequently, in an ironic or condescending tone.

Such a favourable situation does not at all obtain at present, but strangely enough, the current state of affairs in the ‘linguistic’ domain is self-contradictory, with participants and policy-makers (as if to complicate things still more) seldom stooping to ventilating such inconsistencies. A dispassionate observer quickly becomes aware of a certain confusion of values, but may search in vain for any enlightening analyses of what makes etymology ‘unscientific’ (subjectivity of pronouncements? insufficiently objective tone? the general air of archaicity?).

There obtains, to begin with, a hazardous discrepancy between the degrees of attention our societies tend to reserve for dictionary-style compilations of comments on word-origins as against monographic investigations into them.