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peseta [peseta 词源字典]: peseta: see ponder
[peseta etymology, peseta origin, 英语词源]
pessimism: pessimism: [18] The first English writer on record as using pessimism was the poet Coleridge, in the 1790s. But he employed it for the ‘worst possible state’. The modern sense ‘expecting the worst’ did not emerge until the early 19th century. The word was probably coined first in French, and was based on Latin pessimus ‘worst’.
pestle: pestle: see piston
petard: petard: see feisty
petition: petition: see repeat
petrel: petrel: [17] The petrel, a gull-like seabird, is alleged to have been named after the apostle Peter, supposedly inspired by the resemblance between the petrel’s habit of flying close to the surface of the sea and touching it with its feet, and Peter’s reported feat of walking on the water, as reported in Matthew 14:29 – ‘And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water, to go to Jesus’
petrol: petrol: [16] Petrol originally meant ‘mineral oil, extracted from the ground’ (what we would now call petroleum or, more loosely, simply oil); not until the end of the 19th century was it applied to the ‘fuel refined from this’. The word was borrowed from French pétrole, which in turn came from Latin petroleum (itself taken over directly into English in the 16th century).

This means etymologically ‘rock-oil’. It was formed from petra ‘rock’ and oleum ‘oil’. Other English words that go back to Latin petra or its Greek source pétrā include parsley, petrify [16], saltpetre [16] (so called because it forms a crust like salt on rocks), and the name Peter (a reference to Jesus calling the apostle Simon the ‘rock on which he would build his church’ – hence ‘Simon Peter’).
=> parsley, petrify, saltpetre
petulant: petulant: see repeat
petunia: petunia: see tobacco
pew: pew: [14] Historically, pew and podium are the same word. Both go back ultimately to Greek pódion ‘small foot, base’, a diminutive form of poús ‘foot’ (a distant relative of English foot). This passed into Latin as podium ‘raised place, balcony’, acquired directly by English as podium [18]. Its plural podia passed into English via Old French puie ‘raised seat, balcony’ as pew.

This was originally used for a sort of raised enclosure in a church, court, etc. rather like a pulpit or dock; then for an enclosure in a church set aside for particular people to sit in (now known as a box pew); and finally (in the 17th century) for a church bench.
=> foot, pedal, podium
phantom: phantom: [13] Like fancy and fantasy, phantom goes back ultimately to the Greek verb phantázein ‘make visible’, a derivative of phaínein ‘show’ (source also of English diaphanous and phenomenon [17]). From phantázein was derived the noun phántasma ‘apparition, spectre’, which passed into Latin as phantasma. This reached English in two separate forms: as phantom, via Old French fantosme; and as phantasm [13], via Old French fantasme. The latter formed the basis of the fanciful coinage (originally French) phantasmagoria [19]. Other related English words are emphasis and pant.
=> diaphanous, emphasis, pant, phase, phenomenon
phase: phase: [19] Greek phásis (a derivative of the verb phaínein ‘show’, source of English phantom) meant ‘appearance’, and also ‘cyclical apparent form of a planet, moon, etc’. This was adopted into modern Latin as phasis, and it originally passed into English (in the 17th century) in the Latin plural form phases. Phase represents a new singular formed from this. The more familiar modern sense ‘stage in a sequence’ is a metaphorical extension of the astronomical meaning.
=> phantom
pheasant: pheasant: [13] Etymologically, the pheasant is a bird from the ‘Phasis’. This was a river in the Caucusus, where the pheasant is supposed according to legend to have originated. The Greeks therefore called it phāsiānós, the ‘Phasian bird’, and the word passed into English via Latin phāsiānus and Anglo-Norman fesaunt.
phenomenon: phenomenon: see phantom
philander: philander: see philosophy
philanthropy: philanthropy: see philosophy
philately: philately: [19] When a Monsieur Herpin, a French stamp-collector, was looking for an impressive and learned-sounding term for his hobby, he was hampered by the fact that the Greeks and Romans did not have postage stamps, and therefore there was no classical term for them. So he decided to go back a stage beyond stamps, to the days of franking with a post-mark. In France, such letters were stamped franc de port ‘carriage-free’, and the nearest he could get to this in Greek was atelés ‘free of charge’, a compound formed from a- ‘not’ and télos ‘payment’.

Using the Greek prefix phil- ‘loving, love of’ (as in philosophy and a wide range of other English words) he created philatélie, which made its first appearance in English in 1865.
philippic: philippic: [16] The original philippics (in Greek philippikós) were a series of speeches in which the Athenian orator Demosthenes denounced the political ambitions of Philip of Macedon in the 4th century BC (the word was a derivative of the Greek name Phílippos ‘Philip’, which etymologically means ‘horse-lover’). The term was subsequently applied (as Latin philippicus) to the speeches of Cicero attacking Mark Anthony, and in due course became a general word for a ‘fierce denunciation’.
philistine: philistine: [16] The original Philistines were inhabitants of Philistia, an area in the southwestern corner of ancient Palestine. They were famed for their aggression and harrying tactics, and so the word Philistine was often used metaphorically for an ‘enemy into whose hands one might fall’, but the notion of a Philistine as a ‘boorish person’ is a comparatively recent development, not recorded in English until the 19th century.

It appears to have originated in German universities (the German term is Philister), and the story goes that it comes from the use of the biblical quotation ‘the Philistines be upon thee, Samson’ as the text of a sermon delivered at the funeral service for a student killed in a town-and-gown riot in Jena.
philosophy: philosophy: [14] Greek phílos (a word of uncertain origin) meant ‘loving’. It has entered into an enormous range of English compounds, including philander [17] (adopted from a Greek word meaning ‘loving men’), philanthropy [17], philately, and philology [17], not to mention all the terms suffixed with -phil or -phile, such as Anglophile [19] and paedophile [20]. Philosophy itself means etymologically ‘loving wisdom’. It comes via Old French filosofie and Latin philosophia from Greek philosophíā, whose second element was a derivative of sophós ‘wise’ (source of English sophisticate).
=> sophisticate