Etymologies
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An attempt to hold all of ancient learning in one reference work, organised on the assumption that if you know where a word comes from you know what the thing is.
- etymology treated as a route to the nature of things
- the whole of secular and sacred learning compressed into one work
- classical fragments preserved by quotation from a shrinking library
- a reference book that became the west's default authority for centuries
The twenty books run from grammar, rhetoric and dialectic through mathematics, medicine, law, theology, languages, human society, animals, the world, buildings, agriculture, war, ships, clothing and food. The organising method is etymological: Isidore derives a word, sometimes correctly and often not, and treats the derivation as revealing the nature of what is named. He worked from a good library at a moment when he believed learning was ending, quoting classical authors he could still obtain, and so preserves fragments of works otherwise lost. It became the standard reference of the Latin west for eight centuries and one of the most copied books of the Middle Ages.
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