A few samples from the A-section of the prospective Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology (ache, akimbo, aloof, and askance)

Ache, akimbo, and askance are words whose etymology has not been discovered despite numerous attempts to trace their initial form and country of origin. By contrast, the derivation of aloof is known, but it is instructive to watch researchers’ groping in the dark for more than two centuries and sometimes even now looking for a better solution. The etymologies offered below are entries in my prospective dictionary of English etymology. Each of them opens with an abstract of its own.