From the December 8 2007 edition of The Montreal Gazette

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A reading list for word-watchers
MARK ABLEY, Freelance
Published: Saturday, December 08

As we hurtle toward Christmas, I’m devoting today’s column to five books on the English language that were published during the past year.

For readers who take pleasure in knowing that “bowels” and “botulism” both come from the Latin word for a small sausage, I recommend Charles Hodgson’s Carnal Knowledge: A Navel Gazer’s Dictionary of Anatomy, Etymology, and Trivia (H.B. Fenn, 260 pages, $17.25).

Hodgson examines a few hundred words that involve the human body – some of them familiar (back, limb, finger), others not (inhiate, yanglao, gonion) – providing each with a brief history and an exact meaning.

The book’s title is an erudite pun that risks being misleading. “Carnal knowledge” usually means sexual intercourse, but Hodgson uses “carnal” in its literal sense, “of the flesh.”

Though he does explain plenty of sex-related terms, his chapter “Below the Belt” takes up only an eighth of the book. There I learned that common words like “yard,” “weapon” and “loom” once had a specific sexual connotation.

For the most part, Hodgson writes in an impersonal tone. His dry prose flickers with excitement, however, when he invents a word for bags under the eyes – surprisingly, English has no word for them, not even an obscure Latinate one. His suggestion is “eyedema.”

Look up “groin” in Carnal Knowledge, and you’ll find this: “The place where the thigh meets the abdomen is a fold in the skin running between the hip and crotch. This fold is the groin.”

But that fails to explain why so many hockey players suffer groin injuries.

For an answer, you’d need to consult The Complete Hockey Dictionary…[the article goes on to other books]