Chapter LXXXIX: Book X: Alphabetical List of Words325

[325] This is the only part of the _Etymologies_ in which Isidore
gives up every principle of organization of his subject-matter
except the alphabetical one. Elsewhere the terms are grouped
according to their meaning, with sometimes traces of alphabetical
order in the groups, but here the dictionary method alone is used.

EXTRACTS

1. Though the derivation of words by the philosophers involves this belief, that _homo_ comes from _humanitas_, _sapiens_ from _sapientia_, because _sapientia_ exists before _sapiens_, still another special cause is evident in the derivation of certain names, as _homo_ from _humus_, whence in a true sense _homo_ is so called. And we have set down certain of these derivations in this work for the sake of example.

44. _Compilator_, one who mixes the words of other men with his own as painters are wont to mix and pound different things in a mortar. Of this crime the famous poet of Mantua was once accused when he had translated certain verses of Homer and mingled them with his own, and when he was called by his rivals a plunderer of the ancients he replied: “Magnarum esse virium clavam Herculi extorquere de manu”.

194. _Nepos_,[326] so called from a certain kind of scorpion that eats its own young, excepting one which has a seat upon its back; this one, being saved, eats its father. Whence men who eat up in luxury the goods of their parents are called _Nepotes_.

[326] Grandson, sometimes has meaning of prodigal, spendthrift.

235. _Rationator_, so-called, a great man because he can give a reason for all the things which are allowed to be wonderful.