Etymology

I will now digress: my mother, being a university professor of Latin and Greek has a natural obsession for etymologies, and the rest of the family happily shares it.
A constant companion at dinner was a big, slightly greasy, dictionary with word histories, later replaced with a vastly more complete five-volumes etymological dictionary.
The moment I had some money from teaching, I immediately went out and bought a copy of the compact edition of the OED: and therein lies madness.

Et`y*mol"o*gy (?), n.; pl. Etymologies (#). [L.etymologia, Gr. ; etymon + discourse, description: cf. F. 'etymologie. See Etymon, and -logy.]

1.

That branch of philological science which treats of the history of words, tracing out their origin, primitive significance, and changes of form and meaning.

2.

That part of grammar which relates to the changes in the form of the words in a language; inflection.

© Webster 1913.