Lev Vasilievich Uspensky a classic of scientific and educational literature for children and youth, linguist, translator, author of books on entertaining linguistics . “Word of Words”, “Mysteries of Toponymics”, “You and Your Name”, “By the Law of the Letter”, “On the Roads and Paths of the Tongue” many of these books were written in the 50-60s of the 20th century, but they have not lost their significance to this day. Before you is one of these books - "Why not otherwise?" Etymological dictionary of a schoolboy . A person has little understanding of what this or that word . means. Man, moreover, wants to know why it means precisely this, and not something quite different. And every word has its own meaning, and every word has its own meaning. The author tried to include in the dictionary as many of the most common school words: "parta" and "teacher", "smooth" and "cheatbox", "physics" and "chemistry" You will learn about the origin of various words, get acquainted with the work of the etymologist: what difficulties he encounters; what tricks and tricks he resorts to when hunting for the ancestors of our words.