英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

linguist [linguist 词源字典]: linguist: see language
[linguist etymology, linguist origin, 英语词源]
link: link: [14] Link goes back ultimately to prehistoric Germanic *khlangkjaz, whose underlying meaning element was ‘bending’ (it also has close relatives in English flank [12], flinch [16], and lank [OE]). ‘Bending’ implies ‘joints’ and ‘links’, and this is the meaning which is the word is presumed to have had when it passed into Old Norse as *hlenkr – from which English acquired link.There is, incidentally, no etymological connection with the now obsolete link ‘torch’ [16], which may have come via medieval Latin linchinus from Greek lúkhnos ‘lamp’, nor with the links on which golf is played, which goes back to Old English hlincas, the plural of hlinc ‘rising ground, ridge’.
=> flank, flinch, lank
links: links: see lean
linnet: linnet: see linen
linoleum: linoleum: see linen
lint: lint: see linen
lintel: lintel: [14] Lintel is the result of the blending of two Latin words: līmes ‘boundary’ (source of English limit) and līmen ‘threshold’ (source of English subliminal and possibly also of sublime). Līmen had a derived adjective, līmināris ‘of a threshold’. In the post-classical period, under the influence of līmes, this became altered to *līmitāris, which was used in Vulgar Latin as a noun meaning ‘threshold’. This passed into English via Old French lintier, later lintel.
=> limit, subliminal
lion: lion: [13] The word for ‘lion’ in virtually all modern European languages goes back to Greek léōn, which was presumably borrowed from some non-Indo-European source. From it came Latin lēo, which Old English took over as lēo. The modern English form lion was introduced in the 13th century via Anglo-French liun. Related forms include French lion, Italian leone, Spanish león, Romanian leu. German löwe, Dutch leeuw, Swedish lejon, Danish løve, Russian lev, and Welsh llew. The -leon of chameleon represents Greek léōn.
=> chameleon
lip: lip: [OE] Lip has been traced back to Indo- European *leb-, which also produced Latin labrum ‘lip’, source of French lèvre ‘lip’ and English labial [16]. Its Germanic descendant was *lepaz-, from which come German lippe, Dutch lip, Swedish läppe, Danish læbe, and English lip.
=> labial
lipid: lipid: see leave
liquid: liquid: [14] Latin liquēre meant ‘be fluid’. From it was derived the adjective liquidus, which reached English via Old French (it was not used as a noun in the sense ‘liquid substance’ until the early 18th century). Also derived from liquēre was the noun liquor, which passed into Old French as licur or licour. English has borrowed this twice: first in the 13th century as licour, which was subsequently ‘re-latinized’ as liquor, and then in the 18th century in the form of its modern French descendant liqueur.

From the same ultimate source come liquefy [16], liquidate [16] (which goes back to a metaphorical sense of Latin liquēre, ‘be clear’ – thus ‘clear a debt’; the modern meaning ‘destroy’ was directly inspired by Russian likvidirovat’), and the final syllable of prolix[15].
=> liquor, prolix
liquorice: liquorice: [13] Liquorice, or licorice as it is usually spelled in American English, has no direct etymological connection with liquor (although liquor has played a significant role in its development). It goes back to Greek glukúrrhiza, which meant literally ‘sweet root’ (it was a compound of glukús ‘sweet’, source of English glycerine, and rhíza ‘root’, source of English rhizome [19]). Under the influence of liquor, this was borrowed into post-classical Latin as liquiritia, which passed into English via Old French licoresse and Anglo-Norman lycorys.
=> glycerine, rhizome
list: list: Over the centuries, English has had no fewer than five different words list, only two of which are now in everyday common usage. List ‘catalogue’ [17] was borrowed from French liste ‘band, border, strip of paper, catalogue’. This goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *līstōn, source also of English list ‘border, strip’ [OE], which now survives only in the plural lists ‘tournament arena’. List ‘tilt’ [17] is of unknown origin. List ‘listen’ [OE], which goes back to Indo-European *klu-, has been replaced by the related listen.

And the archaic list ‘desire’ [OE] (source of listless [15]) goes back to the same source as lust.
=> listless, lust
listen: listen: [OE] The Indo-European base *kludenoted ‘hearing’ (it is the ultimate source of English loud). From its extended form *kluswere derived in prehistoric Germanic the noun *khlustiz ‘hearing’, which eventually produced the now archaic English verb list ‘listen’, and the verb *khlusnōjan ‘hear’, which became English listen.
=> loud
listless: listless: see list
literature: literature: [14] Latin littera meant ‘letter’, and was the source of English letter. From it was derived literātus ‘having knowledge of letters’, hence ‘educated, learned’ (source of English literate [15]); and this formed the basis of the further derivative litterātūra, which denoted ‘writing formed with letters’, and by extension ‘learning, grammar’. English took it over partly direct, partly via French littérature. From the same source comes English literal [14].
=> letter, literal, obliterate
lithograph: lithograph: [19] Greek líthos meant ‘stone’. It has contributed a small cluster of words to English, including lithium [19] (a metal so named from its mineral origin), lithops [20] (the name of a small pebble-like plant, coined in the 1920s, which means literally ‘stoneface’ in Greek), lithosphere [19] (the solid outer layer of the Earth), lithotomy [18] (the surgical removal of stones from the bladder), megalith [19], monolith [19], and the various terms for subdivisions of the Stone Age, such as Neolithic [19] and Paleolithic [19]. Lithography itself, which denotes a method of printing from a flat surface, means etymologically ‘stone-writing’, reflecting the fact that the original printing surfaces in this process were of stone (they are now usually metal).
litmus: litmus: see moss
litre: litre: [19] Litre goes back to Greek lītrā, a term which denoted a Sicilian monetary unit. This found its way via medieval Latin litrā into French as litron, where it was used for a unit of capacity. By the 18th century it had rather fallen out of use, but in 1793 it was revived, in the form litre, as the name for the basic unit of capacity in the new metric system.

It is first recorded in English in 1810. The Greek word was descended from an earlier, unrecorded *līthrā, which was borrowed into Latin as lībra ‘pound’. This is the source of various modern terms for units of weight, and hence of currency, including Italian lira and the now disused French livre, and it also lies behind the English symbol £ for ‘pound’.
=> level, lira
litter: litter: [13] The word litter has come a long way semantically since it was born, from ‘bed’ to ‘rubbish scattered untidily’. It goes back ultimately to Latin lectus ‘bed’, a distant relative of English lie and source of French lit ‘bed’ (which forms the final syllable of English coverlet [13], etymologically ‘bed-cover’). From lectus was derived medieval Latin lectāria, which passed into English via Old French litiere and Anglo-Norman litere ‘bed’.

This original sense was soon extended in English to a ‘portable conveyance or stretcher’, which still survives, just, as an archaism, but the word’s main modern sense, which first emerged fully in the 18th century, derives from the notion of scattering straw over the floor for bedding.
=> coverlet