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flagrant [flagrant 词源字典]: flagrant: [15] Etymologically, flagrant means ‘burning, blazing’. It comes, via French, from the present participle of Latin flagrāre ‘burn’ (source of English conflagration [16]). This in turn went back to Indo-European *bhleg-, which also produced English flame. The use of flagrant for ‘shameless, shocking’, an 18th-century development, comes from the Latin phrase in flagrante delicto ‘red-handed’, literally ‘with the crime still blazing’.
=> conflagration, flame[flagrant etymology, flagrant origin, 英语词源]
flail: flail: [OE] Flail is a distant relative of flagellation [15]. Both go back ultimately to Latin flagrum ‘whip’. This had a diminutive form flagellum, which in prehistoric times was borrowed into West Germanic as *flagil-. It is assumed that Old English inherited it as *flegil (although this is not actually recorded), which, reinforced in Middle English times by the related Old French flaiel, produced modern English flail. Flagellation comes from the derived Latin verb flagellāre ‘whip’.
=> flagellation
flake: flake: [14] Flake appears to go back to a prehistoric Germanic source which denoted the splitting of rocks into strata. This was *flak-, a variant of which produced English flaw [14] (which originally meant ‘flake’), the second syllable of whitlow [14] (which probably means etymologically ‘white fissure’), floe [19], and probably flag ‘stone slab’.
=> flag, flaw, floe, whitlow
flame: flame: [14] Flame traces its history back to an Indo-European *bhleg-, *phleg-, which also produced Greek phlóx ‘flame’ (source of English phlox, and related to phlegm and phlegmatic), Latin flāgrāre ‘burn, blaze’ (source of English flagrant), Latin fulmen (source of English fulminate), and Latin fulgēre ‘shine’ (source of English refulgent [16]).

The relevant descendant in this case was Latin flamma ‘flame’, acquired by English via Old French flame. It had a diminutive form flammula, which produced Old French flambe ‘small flame’, ultimate source of English flambé [19] and flamboyant [19] (originally an architectural term applied to a 15th- and 16th-century French Gothic style characterized by wavy flamelike forms).
=> flagrant, flamboyant, flamingo, phlegm, refulgent
flamingo: flamingo: [16] Flamingos get their name from their reddish-pink plumage, which earned them the epithet ‘fire-bird’. This was expressed in Provençal (the language of southern French coastal areas, where flamingos abound) as flamenc, a compound formed from flama ‘flame’ (a descendant of Latin flamma) and the Germanic suffix -ing ‘belonging to’. English acquired the word via Portuguese flamengo. (It has, incidentally, no etymological connection with flamenco ‘Spanish dance’ [19], which comes from the Spanish word for ‘Flemish’: the people of Flanders seem to have had a reputation in the Middle Ages for bright, flamboyant dress, and hence ‘Flemish’ in Spanish became synonymous with ‘gipsy-like’.)
=> flame
flan: flan: [19] The word flan itself is a relatively recent addition to English, adopted on our behalf from French by the chef Alexis Soyer (a Frenchman working in England), but in that form it is in fact simply a reborrowing of a word which originally crossed the Channel in the 13th century as flawn, denoting some sort of custard tart or cheesecake. Its Old French source was flaon, which came from medieval Latin fladō, but this was originally borrowed from Germanic *fladu- (source of German fladen ‘flat cake, cowpat’ and Dutch vlade ‘pancake’), which is probably related ultimately to Sanskrit prthūs ‘broad’, Greek platūs ‘broad’, and English flat.
=> flat
flank: flank: see link
flannel: flannel: [14] Flannel is probably one of the few Welsh contributions to the English language. It appears to be an alteration of Middle English flanen ‘sackcloth’, which was borrowed from Welsh gwlanen ‘woollen cloth’, a derivative of gwlān ‘wool’. This in turn is related to Latin lāna ‘wool’ and English wool. It is not clear where the British colloquial sense ‘insincere talk’ (which seems to date from the 1920s) comes from, although it may well have been inspired by Shakespeare’s unflattering application of the word to a Welshman in the Merry Wives of Windsor 1598: ‘I am not able to answer the Welsh flannel’, says Falstaff of Hugh Evans, a Welsh parson.
=> wool
flash: flash: [14] The earliest recorded use of flash is as a verb, referring to the swift turbulent splashing movement of water (a memory of which is probably preserved in modern English flash flood). The glints of light on the splashing surface of such water seems to have given rise in the 16th century, or perhaps before, to the main present-day sense of the word ‘burst out with sudden light’. It was presumably originally imitative of the sound of splashing water.
flask: flask: [14] English acquired flask via French flasque from medieval Latin flasca, a word of uncertain origin. It occurs widely in the Germanic languages (German has flasche, for instance, and Dutch vlesch, and the related word flasce existed in Old English, although it did not survive into Middle English), but it is not clear whether the medieval Latin word was borrowed from Germanic, or whether the Germanic languages originally got it from a Latin word (Latin vāsculum ‘small vessel’, a diminutive form of vās – whence English vascular, vase, and vessel – has been suggested as a source).

The sense ‘gunpowder container’, first recorded in the 16th century, may have been inspired by Italian fiasco (source of English fiasco), which came from a variant medieval Latin form flascō. This also produced English flagon [15].
=> fiasco, flagon
flat: flat: [14] The Old English word for ‘flat’ was efen ‘even’, and flat was not acquired until Middle English times, from Old Norse flatr. This came from a prehistoric Germanic *flataz, source also of German platt ‘flat’. And *flataz probably goes back to an Indo-European *pelə -, *plā-, denoting ‘spread out flat’, from which came Sanskrit prthūs ‘broad’, Greek platūs ‘broad’ (source of English place, plaice, plane [the tree], and platypus), Latin plānus ‘flat’ (whence English plane and plain ‘unadorned’), and also English place, plaice, plant, and flan. Flat ‘single-storey dwelling’ [19] is ultimately the same word, but it has a more circuitous history.

It is an alteration (inspired no doubt by the adjective flat) of a now obsolete Scottish word flet ‘interior of a house’, which came from a prehistoric Germanic *flatjam ‘flat surface, floor’, a derivative of the same source (*flataz) as produced the adjective.
=> flan, flatter, floor, place, plaice, plane, platypus
flatter: flatter: [13] Etymologically, flatter means ‘smooth down or caress with the flat of the hand’. It comes from Old French flatter, in which the original literal notion of ‘caressing’ had already passed into the figurative ‘buttering up’. The Old French verb in turn was based on Frankish *flat, the ‘flat or palm of someone’s hand’, a word which shared a common source with English flat.
=> flat
flavour: flavour: [14] The form of the word flavour, and probably to some extent its meaning, owe a lot to savour. It was borrowed from Old French flaor, and originally meant ‘smell’ (the current association with ‘taste’ did not develop until the 17th century). The savour-influenced change from flaor to flavour seems to have happened somewhere in the crack between Old French and Middle English: there is no evidence of a -vspelling in Old French.

The Old French word itself came from Vulgar Latin *flātor ‘smell’, a derivative of Latin flātus ‘blowing, breeze, breath’ (possibly influenced by Latin foetor ‘foul smell’). Flātus in turn came from the past participle of flāre ‘blow’.
flaw: flaw: see flake
flea: flea: see puce
fledge: fledge: [16] The notion underlying fledge is the ‘ability to fly’. Historically, the idea of ‘having feathers’ is simply a secondary development of that underlying notion. The verb comes from an obsolete adjective fledge ‘feathered’, which goes back ultimately to a pre-historic West Germanic *fluggja (source also of German flügge ‘fledged’). This was derived from a variant of the base which produced English fly.

There is no immediate connection with fletcher ‘arrowmaker’ [14], despite the formal resemblance and the semantic connection with ‘putting feathered flights on arrows’, but further back in time there may be a link. Fletcher came from Old French flechier, a derivative of fleche ‘arrow’. A possible source for this was an unrecorded Frankish *fliugika, which, like fledge, could be traceable back to the same Germanic ancestor as that of English fly.
=> fly
flee: flee: [OE] Flee, like its close relatives German fliehe, Dutch vlieden, and Swedish and Danish fly, comes from a prehistoric Germanic *thleukhan, a word of unknown origin. In Old English, flee and fly had the same past tense and past participle (and indeed the same derivatives, represented in modern English by flight), and this, together with a certain similarity in meaning, has led to the two verbs being associated and often confused, but there is no reliable evidence that they are etymologically connected.
fleece: fleece: [OE] Fleece comes from a prehistoric Germanic *flūsaz. This probably goes back to an Indo-European *plus-, which also produced Latin plūma ‘down’, later ‘feathers’, and Lithuanian plunksna ‘feather’. The metaphorical sense of the verb, ‘swindle’, developed in the 16th century from the literal ‘remove the fleece from’.
=> plume
fleet: fleet: [OE] Fleet is one of a vast tangled web of words which traces its history back ultimately to Indo-European *pleu-, denoting ‘flow, float’ (amongst its other English descendants are fly, flood, flow, fledge, fowl, plover, and pluvial). Fleet itself comes from the extended Indo- European base *pleud-, via the Germanic verb *fleutan and Old English flēotan ‘float, swim’ (modern English float comes from the related Old English flotian).

The verb has now virtually died out, but it survives in the form of the present participial adjective fleeting, which developed the sense ‘transient’ in the 16th century, and in the derived noun fleet: Old English seems to have had two distinct nouns flēot based on the verb flēotan, one of which meant ‘ships’, and the other of which signified ‘creek, inlet’ (it survives in the name of London’s Fleet Street, which runs down to the now covered-up Thames tributary, the river Fleet).

The adjective fleet ‘quick’ (as in ‘fleet of foot’) was probably borrowed from Old Norse fljótr, likewise a descendant of Germanic *fleut-.
=> fledge, float, flood, flow, fowl, plover, pluvial
flesh: flesh: [OE] The etymological notion underlying flesh, and its near relative flitch ‘side of bacon’ [OE], is of ‘slitting open and cutting up an animal’s carcase for food’. It, together with its continental cousins, German fleisch and Dutch vleesch ‘flesh’ and Swedish fläsk ‘bacon’, comes ultimately from Indo-European *pel- ‘split’. Consequently, the earliest recorded sense of the Old English word flǣsc is ‘meat’; the broader ‘soft animal tissue’, not necessarily considered as food, seems to have developed in the late Old English period.
=> flitch