英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

farrow [farrow 词源字典]: farrow: [OE] Farrow, nowadays used mainly as a verb for ‘give birth to a litter of pigs’, originally meant ‘young pig’. Its ultimate source was Indo- European *porkos (from which English also gets pork). The Germanic descendant of this was *farkhaz, which produced German ferkel ‘young pig’ and Dutch varken ‘pig’ (as in aardvark, literally ‘earth-pig’, originally from Afrikaans) as well as farrow.
=> aardvark, pork[farrow etymology, farrow origin, 英语词源]
fart: fart: [OE] Fart is a widespread and ancient word in the Indo-European languages, and goes back to a prehistoric Indo-European *perd-, which may originally have been an imitation of the sound of a fart. Its other offspring besides fart include German farzen and furzen, Swedish fjärta, Danish fjerte, Russian perdet’, Polish pierdzieć, Greek pordízō, and Welsh rhechain.
farthing: farthing: [OE] Farthing has a long history as an English coin-name, going back to the 10th century, when it was used in translations of the Bible to render Latin quadrans, a quarter of a denarius. It was introduced into English currency (as a silver coin equal to a quarter of a penny) in the reign of Edward I; in Charles Il’s time copper was used for it, and from 1860 until its abolition in 1971 it was a bronze coin.

Appropriately, the term means literally ‘quarter’; it was originally a derivative of Old English fēortha ‘fourth’, formed with the suffix -ing denoting ‘fractional part’ (found also in riding [11], former name of the administrative areas of Yorkshire, which etymologically means ‘third part’).
=> four
fascinate: fascinate: [16] To fascinate somebody is literally to ‘bewitch’ them. The word comes from the past participle of the Latin verb fascināre, which was a derivative of fascinum ‘witchcraft’. The Roman phallic deity, incidentally, was named Fascinus, because an amulet in the shape of a penis was hung around children’s necks in ancient times to ward off evil spells.
fascist: fascist: [20] The early 20th-century Italian fascisti, under Benito Mussolini, took their name from Italian fascio, literally ‘bundle’ but figuratively ‘group, association’. Its source was Latin fascis ‘bundle’, from whose diminutive form fasciculus English gets fascicle [15]. Closely related was Latin fascia ‘band, bandage, strip’, borrowed by English in the 16th century.
=> fascia, fascicle
fashion: fashion: [13] The underlying notion of fashion is of ‘making’, ‘forming’, or ‘shaping’. The main modern sense of the word developed via ‘particular shape or style’, ‘way, manner’, and ‘prevailing or current manner’. English acquired it via Anglo-Norman fasun from Latin factiō, a derivative of facere ‘make, do’ (which has contributed an enormous range of vocabulary to English, from fact to difficult, and is distantly related to English do itself).

Latin factiō was only rarely used in the literal sense ‘making’. In classical times it was generally applied to a ‘group of people acting together’ (hence English faction [16]), and the metaphorical extension to ‘way, manner’ and ‘custom’ taken up by English fashion is a post-classical development.
=> difficult, fact, faction, factory
fast: fast: [OE] Widely dissimilar as they now seem, fast ‘quick’ and fast ‘abstain from food’ in fact come from the same ultimate source. This was Germanic *fastuz, which denoted ‘firm’. That underlying sense persists in various contexts, such as ‘hold fast’ and ‘fast friend’. The verbal application to ‘eating no food’ originated in the notion of ‘holding fast to a particular observance’ – specifically, abstinence from food.

The use of fast for ‘quick’ is a much later development, dating from the 13th century. It probably comes from a perception of fast ‘firm’ containing an underlying connotation of ‘extremity’ or ‘severity’.
fasten: fasten: [OE] Etymologically, fasten means ‘make fast’; it goes back ultimately to Germanic *fastuz, source of English fast. From this was derived a verb *fastinōjan, which passed into Old English as fæstnian. To begin with this seems only to have been used in the metaphorical sense ‘settle, establish’. The more concrete ‘attach’ is not recorded until the 12th century, and the earliest reference to its use for locking or bolting a door comes from as late as the mid-18th century.
=> fast
fat: fat: [OE] Fat is one of a large Indo-European family of words denoting the substance ‘fat’ or its consequences in terms of obesity – the probably related Greek pímelē and Latin pinguis, for instance, signified respectively ‘lard’ and ‘fat’. The Germanic members of the family, which include German fett, Dutch vet, and Swedish fet as well as English fat, go back to a prehistoric Germanic *faitaz.
fate: fate: [14] Etymologically, fate is ‘that which is spoken’ – that is, by the gods. Like so many other English words, from fable to profess, it goes back ultimately to the Indo-European base *bha- ‘speak’. Its immediate source was Italian fato, a descendant of Latin fātum, which was formed from the past participle of the verb fārī ‘speak’.

That which the gods say determines the destiny of human beings, and so Latin fātum came to signify ‘what is preordained, destiny’. It was used in the plural fāta to personify the Fates, the three goddesses who preside over human destiny – their direct etymological descendants in English have been diminished to fairies. The derivative fatal [14] comes from Latin fatālis, perhaps via Old French fatal.
=> confess, fable, fairy, profess
father: father: [OE] Father is the English representative of a general Indo-European family of words for ‘male parent’. Its ancestor is Indo-European pətér, which probably originated (like the words for ‘mother’, and indeed like English daddy and papa and Welsh tad ‘father’) in prearticulate syllables interpreted by proud parents as words. Its multifarious descendants include Greek patér, Latin pater (whence French père, Italian and Spanish padre – borrowed into English in the 16th century – and English pater, paternal, patriarch, patrician, patriot, and patron), Irish athair, Armenian hayr, German vater, Dutch vader, Swedish and Danish fader, and English father.

A less obvious relation is perpetrate [16]; this comes ultimately from Latin perpetrāre, a derivative of the verb patrāre, which originally meant literally ‘perform or accomplish in the capacity of a father’.
=> paternal, patriot, patron, perpetrate
fathom: fathom: [OE] The underlying etymological meaning of fathom appears to be ‘stretching out, spreading’. It probably comes ultimately from the Indo-European base *pot-, *pet-, which also produced Latin patēre ‘be open’ (source of English patent) and Greek pétalos ‘outspread’ (source of English petal). Its Germanic descendant was *fath-, which produced the noun *fathmaz, direct ancestor of Old English fæthm.

Here, the notion of ‘stretching out’ seems to have spread via ‘stretching out the arms’ to, on the one hand ‘embrace’ (and one meaning of Old English fæthm was ‘embrace, bosom’), and on the other ‘length spanned by outstretched arms’ – about six feet.
=> patent, petal
fatigue: fatigue: [17] In English a relatively formal term, fatigue goes back ultimately to a Latin expression roughly equivalent to the English notion of having ‘had it up to here’. It was borrowed from French fatiguer, a descendant of Latin fatigāre ‘tire’. This appears to have been related to the adverb affatim ‘sufficiently’, suggesting that underlying fatigāre was the idea of having ‘had enough’. The derivative indefatigable ‘tireless’ [16] comes from Latin indēfatigābilis.
fatuous: fatuous: see fade
faucal: faucal: see suffocate
fault: fault: [13] Like fail, fallacy, fallible, and false, fault comes ultimately from Latin fallere ‘deceive, fail’. Its past participle formed the basis of a Vulgar Latin noun *fallita ‘failing, falling short’, which passed into English via Old French faute in the sense ‘lack, deficiency’. The notion of ‘moral culpability’ does not seem to have become incorporated into the word until the late 14th century.
=> fail, fallacy, fallible, false
fauna: fauna: [18] Fauna was a Roman goddess of the countryside, sister of Faunus (the Roman equivalent of Greek Pan) who was a nature and fertility god worshipped by shepherds, farmers, etc. The Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus applied her name in 1746 to his catalogue of the animals of Sweden, Fauna suecica ‘Swedish Fauna’, and it has been used since then as a collective term for the animal life of a region (one of the earliest records of its use in English is by the naturalist Gilbert White in 1771). (Faunus, source of English faun [14], may be related ultimately to Latin favēre ‘regard favourably’, source of English favour.)
=> faun
fauvism: fauvism: see fallow
favour: favour: [14] Latin favēre meant ‘regard favourably, side with protect’. It came ultimately from Indo-European *dhegh-, *dhogh- ‘burn’, which also produced Latin fovēre ‘heat, cherish’ (source of English foment [15]) and English day. From it was derived the Latin noun favor, which passed into English via Old French favour. Favourite [16] came via early modern French favorit from Italian favorito, the past participle of the verb favorire ‘favour’.
=> day, foment
fawn: fawn: Fawn ‘young deer’ [14] and fawn ‘grovel’ [13] are two distinct words. The latter did not always have the negative associations of ‘servility’ which it usually carries today. Originally it simply referred to dogs showing they were happy – by wagging their tails, for instance. It was a derivative of Old English fægen ‘happy’, an adjective of Germanic origin which survives in the archaic fain ‘willingly’ (as in ‘I would fain go’). Fawn ‘young deer’ comes via Old French faon ‘young of an animal’ and Vulgar Latin *fētō from Latin fētus ‘giving birth, offspring’ (whence English foetus).

The general sense ‘young of an animal’ survived into the early 17th century in English (James I’s translation of the Psalms, for instance, in 1603, has ‘the fawn of unicorns’ in Psalm 29, where the Authorized Version simply refers to ‘a young unicorn’), but on the whole ‘young of the deer’ seems to have been the main sense of the word from the 15th century onwards.

Its use as a colour term, after the pale yellowish brown of a young deer’s coat, dates from the 19th century.
=> fain, foetus