oratoryoudaoicibaDictYouDict[orator 词源字典]
orator: [14] Orator is one of a small family of English words that go back to the Latin verb ōrāre ‘speak’. Others include oracle [14], oration [14] (whence, by back-formation, orate [16]), and oratory ‘public speaking’ [16]. And besides these, there is a special subset of words that depend on a later, extended sense of ōrāre, ‘pray’: adore [15] (etymologically ‘pray to’), inexorable, oratory ‘small chapel’ [14] (whose Italian form has given English oratorio [18]), and the now archaic orison ‘prayer’ [12] (etymologically the same word as oration).
=> adore, inexorable, oracle, orison[orator etymology, orator origin, 英语词源]
orbityoudaoicibaDictYouDict
orbit: [16] Orbit comes from Latin orbita. This was a derivative of the noun orbis, which originally meant ‘circle, disc’. It was applied metaphorically to a number of circular things, including the ‘circular path of a satellite’ (from which the main meaning of orbit comes) and also the ‘eye socket’, and eventually came to be applied to ‘spheres’ as well as ‘circles’ – whence English orb [16].
=> orb
orchardyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
orchard: [OE] Etymologically, an orchard is probably simply a ‘plant-yard’. It appears to have been coined in the prehistoric Germanic period from *worti-, the ancestor of the now archaic English noun wort ‘plant, vegetable, herb’ (which is distantly related to root), and *gardaz, *gardon, forerunner of English yard and garden. Originally, as its derivation suggests, it was quite a broad term, covering vegetable gardens as well as enclosures for fruit trees, but by the 15th century it had more or less become restricted to the latter.
=> garden, yard
orchestrayoudaoicibaDictYouDict
orchestra: [17] In ancient Greece, the term orkhéstrā denoted a ‘semicircular space at the front of a theatre stage, in which the chorus danced’ (it was a derivative of the verb orkheisthai ‘dance’). English originally took it over (via Latin orchēstra) in this historical sense, but in the early 18th century orchestra began to be used for the ‘part of a theatre where the musicians played’, and hence by extension for the ‘group of musicians’ itself. The derivative orchestrate [19] was adapted from French orchestrer.
orchidyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
orchid: [19] Greek órkhis meant ‘testicle’ (a sense preserved in English orchitis ‘inflammation of the testicles’ [18]). The tuberous roots of the orchid supposedly resemble testicles (hence the old dialect name ballock’s-grass for various sorts of wild orchid), and so the plant was named órkhis. The Latin form orchis was taken by botanists of the 16th and 17th centuries as the basis for the plant’s scientific name (they smuggled an inauthentic d into it, under the mistaken impression that its stem form was orchid-), and it passed from there into English.
ordainyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
ordain: see order
ordealyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
ordeal: [OE] The ‘meting out of judgement’ is the etymological notion immediately underlying ordeal, but at a more primitive level still than that it denotes simply ‘distribution, giving out shares’. It comes ultimately from prehistoric Germanic *uzdailjan ‘share out’, a compound verb formed from *uz- ‘out’ and *dailjan, ancestor of English deal.

The noun derived from this was *uzdailjam, and it came to be used over the centuries for the ‘handing out of judgements’ (modern German urteil, for instance, means among other things ‘judicial verdict or sentence’). Its Old English descendant, ordāl, denoted specifically a ‘trial in which a person’s guilt or innocence were determined by a hazardous physical test, such as holding on to red-hot iron’, but the metaphorical extension to any ‘trying experience’ did not take place until as recently as the mid-17th century.

=> deal
orderyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
order: [13] Order comes via Old French ordre from Latin ōrdō. This originally denoted a ‘row, line, series, or other regular arrangement’, but it spawned a lot of other metaphorical meanings that have also come through into English, including ‘regularity’ and (from the general notion of a ‘rank’ or ‘class’) ‘ecclesiastical rank or office’ (preserved in English in ‘holy orders’ and in the derivatives ordain [13] and ordination [15]).

The sense ‘command, directive’, first recorded in English in the mid-16th century, presumably comes from the notion of ‘keeping in order’. Other derivatives of ōrdō are represented by ordinance [14] and ordinary.

=> ordain, ordinary, ordination
ordinaryyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
ordinary: [14] Latin ōrdinārius meant ‘following the usual course’; it was a derivative of ōrdō, source of English order. It was originally used in English as a noun, meaning ‘someone with jurisdiction in ecclesiastical cases’, and right up until the 19th century the noun ordinary was common, with an amazingly wide range of meanings (including ‘post, mail’, ‘fixed allowance’, ‘priest who visited people in the condemned cell’, and ‘tavern’). Nowadays, however, the only (quasi-)nominal use at all frequently encountered is in the phrase out of the ordinary. English first took the word up as an adjective in the 15th century.
=> order
ordinationyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
ordination: see order
oreyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
ore: see era
organyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
organ: [13] Greek órganon meant ‘tool, implement, instrument’. It was a descendant of the Indo-European base *worg- (source also of English work). Latin took the word over as organum, and in the post-classical period applied it to ‘musical instruments’. At first it was a very general term, but gradually it narrowed down to ‘wind instrument’, and in ecclesiastical Latin it came to be used for a musical instrument made from a number of pipes.

When English acquired it, via Old French organe, it was in the intermediate sense ‘wind instrument’ (in the 1611 translation of Psalm 150, ‘Praise him with stringed instruments and organs’, organ still means ‘pipe’), but by the end of the 17th century this had died out. The sense ‘functional part of the body’ goes right back to the word’s Greek source. The derivative organize [15] comes via Old French from medieval Latin organizāre.

This originally denoted literally ‘furnish with organs so as to form into a living being’, and hence ‘provide with a co-ordinated structure’.

=> organize, orgy, work
orgyyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
orgy: [16] Orgy comes ultimately from Greek órgia (like English organ, a descendant of the Indo-European base *worg- ‘work’), which denoted ‘religious revels involving dancing, singing, getting drunk, and having sex’. It was a plural noun, and passed into English via Latin orgia and French orgies as orgies. This was very much a historical term, denoting the goings-on in ancient Greece, but in the 18th century it was singularized to orgy, and used for any ‘copulatory revelry’.
=> organ, work
orientyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
orient: English has two separate words orient, but they come ultimately from the same source: Latin orīrī ‘rise’ (from which English also gets abort and origin). Its present participle, oriēns ‘rising’, was used for the direction of the ‘rising sun’, and hence for the ‘east’, and passed into English via Old French as the adjective and noun orient [14].

The verb orient [18] was borrowed from French orienter, a derivative of the adjective orient. It originally meant ‘turn to face the east’, and was not used for ‘ascertain or fix the direction of’ until the 19th century. Orientate emerged in the mid-19th century, probably as a back-formation from orientation [19], itself a derivative of orient.

=> abort, origin
orificeyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
orifice: see oral
originyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
origin: [14] Etymologically, origin denotes literally an ‘arising’. The word was borrowed from Latin orīgō ‘source’, a derivative of the verb orīrī ‘rise’. This also produced English abort [16] (etymologically ‘be born badly’) and orient.
=> abort, orient
orisonyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
orison: see orator
ormoluyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
ormolu: see mill
ornamentyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
ornament: [14] Ornament comes from Latin ōrnāmentum, a derivative of the verb ōrnāre ‘equip, get ready’, hence ‘decorate’. This also forms the basis of English adorn [14] and suborn [16] (etymologically ‘equip secretly’).
=> adorn, suborn
orthodoxyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
orthodox: [16] Greek orthós meant ‘straight, correct’ (it enters into numerous English compounds, including orthography ‘correct spelling’ [15] and orthopaedic [19]). Greek dóxa meant ‘opinion’; it was derived from the verb dokein ‘think’. Put them together and you got orthódoxos ‘having the right opinion’, which passed into English via ecclesiastical Latin orthodoxus.