Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English (1958)

Philologists who chase
A panting syllable through time and space,
Start it at home, and hunt it in the dark,
To Gaul, to greece, and into Noah's Ark.

Cowper, Retirement

For

CECIL FRANKLIN

in gratitude to a kindly and generous man
and in admiration of a remarkable publisher

Professor W. W. Skeat's large and small etymological dictionaries were last revised in 1910; Ernest Weekley's  Concise Etymological Dictionary and Ferdinand Holthausen's Etymologisches Wörteerbuch der englischen Sprache, both excellent in their way, treat words so briefly and ignore ramifications so wholeheartedly that it was easy to plan a work entirely different—a remark that applies equally to Skeat's Concise and, for relationships, almost as much to his larger book.

-torium. ‘From auditorium we detach -torium and make lubritorium’ (Roberson and Cassidy, as above).