BUTTER, Henry

Small 8vo, original blind stamped green buckram, spine unlabelled, title to upper board in blind. 158[ii]pp.. Contemporary bookseller’s label to paste-down, Arthur D. Porter’s name in ink to f.e.p., dated 1881. Minor ink juvenilia to rear endpapers. 2 pp. publisher’s advertisements in back, one featuring “Butter’s Dissected Trinomial Cube”. In good condition with light signs of wear throughout. Clean, tight and complete. Popular little work running through many editions in Britain, Ireland and Australia. Published before the rigour of modern linguistics, the seemingly random lists are a joy to leaf through: “words pronounced nearly alike”, “equivocal words”. With a strong emphasis on the new interest in etymology: “French words and phrases used in English”, “words derived from Latin verbs” etc...