英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

bill (v.)[bill 词源字典]: "to send someone a bill of charge," 1864, from bill (n.1). Related: Billed; billing.[bill etymology, bill origin, 英语词源]
bill (n.3): ancient weapon, Old English bill "sword (especially one with a hooked blade), chopping tool," common Germanic (compare Old Saxon bil "sword," Middle Dutch bile, Dutch bijl, Old High German bihal, German Beil, Old Norse bilda "hatchet." See bill (n.2).
billable (adj.): 1570s, from bill (v.) + -able.
billabong: Australian, "backwater, stagnant pool," 1865, from Billibang, Aboriginal name of Bell River, from billa "water" + bang, of uncertain meaning.
billboard (n.): 1845, American English, from bill (n.1) + board (n.1). Any sort of board where bills were meant to be posted. Billboard magazine founded 1894, originally a trade paper for the bill-posting industry. Its music sales charts date from 1930s.
billet (v.): 1590s, "to assign quarters to," earlier, as a noun, "official record or register" (Middle English), from Anglo-French billette "list, schedule," diminutive of bille (see bill (n.1)) with -let. Related: Billeted; billeting.
billet (n.1): thick stick of wood, mid-15c., from Middle French billette, diminutive of bille "stick of wood" (see billiards).
billet (n.2): "document, note;" see billet-doux.
billet-doux (n.): also billet doux, 1670s, "love letter," French, literally "sweet note," from billet "document, note" (14c., diminutive of bille; see bill (n.1)) + doux "sweet," from Latin dulcis (see dulcet).
billfold (n.): 1879, from bill (n.1) + fold, here perhaps short for folder.
billiard: singular of billiards, used only in combinations.
billiards (n.): 1590s, from French billiard, originally the word for the wooden cue stick, a diminutive from Old French bille "stick of wood," from Medieval Latin billia "tree, trunk," possibly from Gaulish (compare Irish bile "tree trunk").
billing (n.): 1875, "announcement on a bill or poster," verbal noun from bill (v.); hence top billing (1928). Meaning "act of sending out a bill" is recorded from 1908.
billingsgate (n.): 1670s, the kind of coarse, abusive language once used by women in the Billingsgate market on the River Thames below London Bridge.
Billingsgate is the market where the fishwomen assemble to purchase fish; and where, in their dealings and disputes they are somewhat apt to leave decency and good manners a little on the left hand. ["Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue," 1811]
The place name is Old English Billingesgate, "gate of (a man called) Billing;" the "gate" probably being a gap in the Roman river wall. The market is mid-13c., not exclusively a fish market until late 17c.
billion (n.): 1680s, from French billion (originally byllion in Chuquet's unpublished "Le Triparty en la Science des Nombres," 1484; copied by De la Roche, 1520); see bi- "two" + million. A million million in Britain and Germany (numeration by groups of sixes), which was the original sense; subsequently altered in French to "a thousand million" (numeration by groups of threes) and picked up in that form in U.S., "due in part to French influence after the Revolutionary War" [David E. Smith, "History of Mathematics," 1925]. France then reverted to the original meaning in 1948. British usage is truer to the etymology, but U.S. sense is said to be increasingly common there in technical writing.
In Italian arithmetics from the last quarter of the fifteenth century the words bilione or duilione, trilione, quadrilione or quattrilione, quintilione, cinquilione, or quinquilione, sestione or sestilione, settilione, ottilione, noeilione and decilione occur as common abbreviations of due volte millioni, tre volte millione, etc. In other countries these words came into use much later, although one French writer, Nicolas Chuquet, mentions them as early as 1484, in a book not printed until 1881. The Italians had, besides, another system of numeration, proceeding by powers of a thousand. The French, who like other northern peoples, took most if not all their knowledge of modern or Arabic arithmetic from the Italians, early confounded the two systems of Italian numeration, counting in powers of a thousand, but adopting the names which properly belong to powers of a million.
For a time in Britain gillion (1961), based on giga-, was tried as "a thousand million" to avoid ambiguity.
billionaire (n.): 1844, American English, from billion on model of millionaire. The first in the U.S. likely was John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937), some time after World War I.
billionth: 1778, from billion + -th (2).
billow (n.): 1550s, perhaps older in dialectal use, from Old Norse bylgja "a wave, a billow," from Proto-Germanic *bulgjan (cognates: Middle High German bulge "billow, bag"), from PIE *bhelgh- "to swell" (see belly (n.)).
billow (v.): 1590s, from billow (n.). Related: Billowed; billowing.
billowy (adj.): 1610s, from billow (n.) + -y (2). Related: Billowiness.