"Yong Huang offers in the introduction a clear and detailed explanation of the methodology employed throughout the work, which presents a practical balance between scholarly research and light reading... Yong’s work is an important addition to the field of language study, and will be a welcome supplement to anyone’s vocabulary-building tools."
Edward A. Roberts
Professor Emeritus of Central Michigan University, author of A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Spanish Language

"(Yong Huang's book) filled a niche on my language-learning bookshelf I hadn't even thought of before... the system works as an efficient road map to boosting vocabulary by steering readers directly to the most effective words for building understanding and fluency fast, while pointing out shortcuts and possible pitfalls along the way. It's especially useful for well-read adults and polyglots."
Miranda Metheny
Spanish Teacher at District of Columbia Public Schools, polyglot, volunteer admin of Facebook Polyglots group

⎢                                ⎡ Etymology ⎤
               ⎡ Word analysis <-⎢           ⎥-> this book
               ⎢                 ⎣ Mnemonics ⎦
Study method <-⎢
               ⎢
               ⎣ Rote memory (e.g. flash cards)

(The main text of this little dictionary arranges the words in the order of their usage frequency per Real Academia Española corpus, with index at the end of the book. Cognates serve as the most important learning aid.)

* Headword éxito (p.28): éxito in the text, twice, should be in italic.
* Headword pelo (p.48): "Cognate with Latin pilus" should be "From Latin pilus".
* Headword misa (p.85): æ should be in italic.
* Headword basura (p.92): "Syrian" should be "Iraqi". (thanks Oscar)
* Headword litro (p.123): The second "liter (cognate)" is meant to be "litre (cognate)".
* Headword mora (p.124): "See also morado ("dwelling")" should be "See also morada ("dwelling")". The word morado should be a separate headword entry, and its sense of "purple" is from the color of mulberry. In both entries, there should be "Not to be confused with morada/morado" notes.
* Headword aéreo (p.128): área should be in italic.
* Headword catedrático (p.132): "Alco" should be "Also".
* Headword piscina (p.133): "Cognate" should be "Doublet".
* Headword volante (p.142): volar should be in italic.
* Headword pretender (p.149): pretend in "English pretend" should be in italic.
* Headword arce (p.166): "Cognate" is followed by an extra "with".
* Headword calificar (p.166): "change" should be "to change".
* Headword torpe (p.180): missing quotation marks in the parentheses for turpitude.
* Headword ancilla (p.192): Ths chemical symbol for silver should be Ag.
* Headword flecha (p.197): On line 4, "your" should be "young".
* Headword bendición (p.200): "From From" should be "From".
* Headword rotundo (p.202): redondo should be in italic.
* Headword aval (p.219): à valoir should be in italic.
* Headword vagar (p.227): The blank line following this line should be removed.
* Headword estirpe (p.229): "extirpate" should be "with the root of extirpate".
* Headword fosa (p.231): The sentence in the middle should be "If you don't know the medical term fossa, associate the first syllable of fosa with foundation and think of the low base".
* (Paperback only) Index hombro (p.265): Should be "hombro 69,(13)".

* Headword falta (p.16): This word can also mean "foul" in sports. (thanks Marina)
* Headword real (p.17): To help remember the sense of "royal", note that many Spanish sports clubs call themselves real, most notably Real Madrid. (thanks Marina)
* Headword claro (p.17): This word can also mean "yes", "certainly". (thanks Oscar)
* Headword dinero (p.19): "The dinar or denar is a main currency unit in modern circulation in nine mostly-Islamic countries", according to Wikipedia. That's a perfect cognate if you know this currency. (thanks urdubyoddballs)
* Headword ambos (p.19): Cognate with the first element of ambidextrous and ambivalent, i.e., ambi-. (thanks Miranda Metheny)
* Headword corazón (p.28): While suffix -ón is normally augmentative, corazón refers to "heart" regardless size. But one scholar said that the word originally referred to the heart of a warrior or lover.
* Headwords peligro, peligroso (p.38), milagro (p.93), Argelia (p.160): The alternative explanation is the metathesis between r and l in the word.
* Headword gasto (p.51): Mnemonic could also be costear ("to afford", "to pay for") as in "costear ese gasto" since the two words are used in Spanish. (thanks Julian Descaillaux)
* Headwords mentira, mentir (p.83): Also cognate with mendacious, mendacity.
* Headword pelota (p.85): Also cognate with pellet.
* Headword desayuno (p.111): English breakfast literally means "breaking i.e. ending fasting", just like desayuno does.
* Headword Suecia (p.129) and Suiza (p.174): In spite of lack of d in the second syllable, Suecia, the name for Sweden in Spanish has e instead of i as part of the vowel in this syllable (as in Portuguese, Italian, but not French). In contrast, the name for Switzerland (Suiza) uses i. This is easy to remember because the English words begin with Swe (regardless the pronunciation) and Swi, respectively
* Headword comarca (p.133): Another theory maintains that -marca is cognate with margin.
* Headwords rata (p.165) and rato (p.44): Native speakers do not consider rato to have the sense of "male rat" in spite of the entry in DRAE, and would say "rata macho" instead. "When you are referring to the animal, it's always rata or ratón." (thanks Julian)
* Headword cabildo (p.179): Also cognate with capital, which may better help remember this word.
* Headword constatar (p.181): To be re-written as follows: The root is cognate with state (“to declare in words”). Prefix con- (which is from Latin cum “together”) may be considered an intensifier. According to F.E.J. Valpy, “Cum in composition increases the force of the simple verb... If one thing is put (cum) with another, that other thing is increased.”
* Headword pizca (p.193): Use a mnemonic such as "a small piece of pizza".
* Headword suspiro (p.195): The root is also cognate with the root of aspire (originally "to breathe onto"), conspire (originally "to breathe together"), inspire ("to breathe in"), etc.
* Headword colchón (p.216): Cognate with quilt, quoit, and possibly with cushion, which obviously serves as a perfect mnemonic.
* Headword hormiga (p.223): Or as a mnemonic, think of the last Greek letter omega as if it represents something small like an ant.
* Headword pepita (p.225): Suffix -ita is diminutive just as -kin is for English pumpkin (also seen in napkin and others). See Wiktionary. By the way, English pumpkin itself occurs more frequently than Spanish calabaza probably due to the Thanksgiving tradition which does not exist in Spanish-speaking countries and to the America-specific pumpkin carving tradition during Halloween.
* Another good Spanish etymology Web site, Origen de las palabras. (thanks urdubyoddballs)
* Last but not the least: Ms. Marina's well-written review correctly points out my casual usage of the term cognate throughout the book. Technically, two words are cognates only if they are in two languages sharing a common ancestor language and the two words independently descend from the origin (etymon) in the ancestor language. Due to the latter requirement, an English word that came from Latin, cannot be a cognate with the Spanish word derived from that Latin word, because the ancestor of English is Germanic, whose ancestor is Proto-Indo-European, which is also the ancestor of Latin (one of the Italic languages). If the English and the Latin words were each independently traced to a common Proto-Indo-European word, they would be cognates; otherwise, they can only be akin or related. Nevertheless, this book adopts a common usage of the term cognate, as understood by most educated English-speaking people not specialized in philology or linguistics.