Porter Square Books is excited to welcome Jess Zafarris for the release of her book, Useless Etymology. Sarah Cole will join Zafarris in conversation.

Did you know that an "astronaut" is literally a "star sailor," that a thesaurus is, in fact, a "treasure
 trove" of words, and that someone who is "sinister" is actually just "left-handed"?
 
 Have you ever wondered why English isn't considered a Romance language if 60% of our
 words are Latin-derived?
 
 Did Shakespeare really invent 1,700 words, and if not, why the heck do we say that he did?
 
 Why is the English language stuffed with so many synonyms?

Let's be real: English can seem pretty bonkers. And, well, sometimes it is. But through thorough thought and a pinch of curiosity, method can be found within the madness of our modern tongue-even within the disparate pronunciation of the words "through," "thorough," and "thought."
 
 Derived from Germanic, Romance, Hellenic, Semitic, African and Native American languages, English contains multitudes. It has been (and continues to be) transformed by war and conquest, art and literature, science and technology, love and hate, wit and whim.
 
 Useless Etymology takes readers on a time-traveling adventure to unlock the beauty, wonder, and absurdity within our everyday words, how they came to be, and the unexpected ways their origins weave a global, cross-cultural labyrinth of meaning.

Filled with fun facts and delightful discoveries, this is an enlightening read for anyone who wants to know more about why the English language works the way that it does.

Jess Zafarris is the author of several books on word origins, including Once Upon a Word (Rockridge Press, 2020), Words from Hell (Chambers, 2023), and Useless Etymology (Chambers, 2025). She is also a video content creator who has built a devoted social media following of more than 100,000 followers, and she co-hosts the podcast Words Unravelled, which has more than 90,000 YouTube followers along with more than 1,000 daily listeners across podcast platforms. Her blog, UselessEtymology.com, has been educating curious word lovers for more than a decade.

She serves as an adjunct professor in the Writing, Literature, and Publishing department at Emerson College and is an Editor-at-Large for Ragan Communications and PR Daily. She speaks at events including Writer’s Digest’s Annual Conference, teaches writing- and author-centric courses for a range of universities and online platforms, and has developed word-origin content for Dictionary.com. She and her work have been quoted, featured, and mentioned in The New York Times, NPR, The Guardian, The Boston Globe, Reader's Digest, and Harper’s Magazine, and she has appeared on BBC World Service Radio, NPR, and Boston Public Radio.

Sarah Cole (she/her) is an assistant professor in the Writing, Literature & Publishing department at Emerson College. Her teaching emphasizes ethics and critical analysis of current issues in publishing, international perspectives, and the complete end-to-end publishing process with an eye to innovation and sustainability. She is a publishing consultant, book coach and series editor. Before joining Emerson, Sarah was most recently a Publishing Director at John Murray Press, a division of Hachette UK based in London, where she acquired Jess's two most recent books under the Chambers imprint.

Jess Zafarris, author or Useless Etymology, in conversation with Sarah Cole