Does anyone know where I can search the origin of words?

Here's a suggestion.

Go to bartleby.com

There you'll see the link to the American Heritage Dictionary. You can enter a word there you're interested in, and you'll go to a definition. You'll read a little basic information on the etymology of the word (usually). Sometimes a root of a word is highlighted, and, if you click on the root, you'll be taken to an appendix that gives more detailed etymological history. If you don't find a highlighted root, sometimes you can click on related or similar words within the definition, and there you might find the root highlighted that will take you to the appendix.

I'm not computer savvy. There may be a more direct way of getting to the proper appendix with the information on the root of the word I'm looking for. But I just click on the highlighted areas to track the word I want as far back as I can. It's still a very fast series of clicking actions, however, to track a word down.

Others on this board will give you even more information.

Welcome, erlaursen!

WW

Edit: P.S. I just tracked down a word on American Heritage through Bartleby. I was not able to go to the appendices because the word had no links. There was some basic etymological information, but no related word and no other links were included here. So, sometimes you can get into the detailed etymology on the American Heritage site, and others you won't be able to.

HERE (see Apastrophie thread )
and lots of other places, like
dictionaries (there are specialized dictionaries of etymology)
language courses
reading (books on language...and etymology)
and places like Quinnon's web site, or dictionary sites,

or you could make a study of a half dozen languages, such as greek, latin, sanscrit, hewbrew, german, and what is known about the Indo European roots that have already been identified; and at the same time study speach pathology, and from the combined studies, begin to develope an understanding of how sounds change and migrate.. crude example... Jean (the french word for JOHN)- became SEAN in irish(close to Shawn, when spoke)-- since irish doesn't have a J-like John, and if you say a french Jean and the irish Sean you can hear the similarity, and understand why Sean is word of choice from your studies, you can begin to understand how words change as they move from languages to language.

then with 20 or 30 years of extensive reading, (in all of the languages,) you might well find connections between words and ideas that have been missed..

Here is the etymology source I use most. In URL, edit letter near end, and page number
http://www.geocities.com/etymonline/d4etym.htm

Now Helen, just stop that! You had me laughing so hard I almost fell off the chair!

Welcome erlaursen! Hang in there with us. It takes awhile to sort out the serious from the serio-serious! (chuckling emoticon)

what we don't have collectively 1000+ years of reading here?
and hundreds of years of education, a half dozen Phd or so.. (so what that i was a HS drop out... i was smart enough, to seek out, and hang out with the like of you guys, all my life.. so now, i know a hell of lot more than just the usually crap!)

as for language, is not just my meager english, but we do have people who know german, latin greek, italian, some turkish, esperanto, spanish, portugues, russian, not to mention languages that broke off of IE long before most european languages.. and then there is chinese..
collectively we are brillant!-- and we are not bad on our own either!