Dusting Off the Abacus

By Allan Metcalf. You can count on Comments on Etymology to dust off old arguments about word histories and offer a comprehensive and often compelling synthesis. That’s what you’ll find in the October 2014 issue of the monthly journal self-published by Gerald Cohen at the Missouri University of Science and Technology, in Rolla, Mo. Half of the issue goes to China for an investigation of the origins of pagoda. But the other half is Cohen’s history of abacus and its form, as well as its name, in the ancient world. More...