I excluded all proper nouns i.e. words beginning with a capital letter. This
left me with 211 items of which 11 had more that one etymology. This gives
us 5.2%.
However, the figure of 211 should be reduced because it includes for example
dab/dabble/dabster etc. which by Doug Cooper's definition should be
considered one entry. The problem is that it is not always easy to determine
what should be considered a separate entry or not. For this reason the
question may be given only somewhat arbitrary answers.
Christopher Brewster
Foreign Language Teaching Centre,
University of Patras, Patras,
Greece, GR 26 500
tel: +30 61 623038
email: brewster@upatras.gr