英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

brochure [brochure 词源字典]: brochure: see broach
[brochure etymology, brochure origin, 英语词源]
chukker: chukker: see cycle
church: church: [OE] Etymologically, a church is the ‘Lord’s house’. Its ultimate source is Greek kūrios ‘lord, master’ (perhaps most familiar nowadays from the words of the choral mass kyrie eleison ‘lord have mercy’). The adjective derived from this was kūriakós, whose use in the phrase ‘house of the lord’ led to its use as a noun, kūrikón. The medieval Greek form, kūrkón ‘house of worship’ was borrowed into West Germanic as *kirika, producing eventually German kirche and English church. The Scots form kirk comes from Old Norse kirkja, which in turn was borrowed from Old English.
=> kirk, kyrie
churn: churn: [OE] It has been speculated that the term churn is based on the granular appearance cream takes on as it is stirred or agitated. The Old English noun cyrin comes from a prehistoric Germanic *kernjōn, which may be related to English corn and kernel and Latin grānum ‘grain’. The derived verb churn is a comparatively late creation, not appearing until the 15th century.
=> corn, grain, kernel
dachshund: dachshund: [19] Dachshund means literally ‘badger-dog’ in German. It was originally bred in Germany for badger-hunting, its long thin body enabling it to burrow into the animals’ setts. The first known reference to it in English (in the anglicized form dachshound) is in a poem by Matthew Arnold of around 1881, Poor Matthias: ‘Max, a dachshound without blot’.
=> hound
enthusiasm: enthusiasm: [17] Enthusiasm has had a chequered semantic history. Like giddiness, it meant originally ‘state of being inspired by a god’. It comes ultimately from Greek énthous or éntheos ‘possessed, inspired’, a compound formed from the prefix en- ‘in’ and theós ‘god’ (as in English theology). From this in turn was derived the verb enthousiázein ‘be inspired’ and the noun enthousiasmós, which passed into English via Latin or French, still with the sense ‘divine inspiration’ (‘Doth he think they knew it by enthusiasm or revelation from heaven?’ Richard Baxter, Infants’ church membership and baptism 1651).

In the stern climate of Puritanism, however, divine inspiration was not something to be encouraged, and as the 17th century progressed enthusiasm took on derogatory connotations of ‘excessive religious emotion’. The modern approbatory meaning, ‘eagerness’, had its beginnings at the start of the 18th century, and by the early 19th century had ousted the deprecatory sense from leading place.
=> theology
fichu: fichu: see fix
hub: hub: [17] Hub is one of those words that emerge unheralded from the undergrowth of language, its forbears uncertain. It seems originally to have meant ‘lump’, and is probably ultimately the same word as hob [16]. This was at first spelled hub and may have denoted a lump of clay used as a bakestone, or a brick or clay projection at the back of a fire on which things were placed to keep warm. And hobnail [16] is etymologically a nail with a large ‘lumpy’ head.
=> hob
hubbub: hubbub: [16] Hubbub is an Irish contribution to English. It comes from Irish Gaelic hooboobbes, which appears to be related to the Old Irish battle-cry abú. This was a derivative of buide ‘victory’ (a relative of which across the Irish Sea formed the basis of the name Boudicca or Boadicea, the Ancient Britons’ version of Victoria). English acquired the word (and the now disused longer form hubbuboo) in the mid 16th century, and originally used it for the ‘warcry of a savage tribe’; the modern sense ‘noisy turmoil’ developed in the 17th century.
huckster: huckster: [12] The Low German dialects of northern Germany appear to have had in prehistoric times a root *huk- which denoted ‘sell’. It has been suggested that this was the source of English hawker ‘peddler’, and with the alternative agent suffix -ster (which originally signified ‘female doer’, but in Low German was used for males) it produced huckster – perhaps borrowed from Middle Dutch hokester.
=> hawk
huddle: huddle: [16] Huddle originally meant ‘hide’ (‘to chop off the head of the sentence, and slyly huddle the rest’, James Bell’s translation of Walter Haddon against Orosius 1581), suggesting that it could well be a derivative of the same base as produced English hide (its form indicates that it would have come via a Low German dialect). But virtually from the first huddling was more than just ‘hiding’ – it was ‘hiding in a heap or among a crowd’; and from this has developed the word’s modern meaning ‘crowd or draw together’.
hug: hug: [16] Etymologically, hug seems to convey the notion of ‘consolation, solicitude’; the expression of such feelings by clasping someone in one’s arms is apparently a secondary semantic development. The word is of Scandinavian origin, and is probably related to, if not borrowed from Old Norse hugga ‘comfort, console’. This was descended from a prehistoric Germanic *hugjan, which also produced Old English hogian ‘think, consider, be solicitous’.
hull: hull: [OE] The notion underlying the word hull is of ‘covering’ or ‘concealing’. It originally meant ‘peapod’ – etymologically, the ‘covering’ of peas – and comes ultimately from the same Indo- European source as produced English cell, clandestine, conceal, hall, hell, and possibly colour and holster. It is generally assumed that hull ‘main body of a ship’, which first appeared in the 15th century, is the same word (a ship’s hull resembling an open peapod), although some etymologists have suggested that it may be connected with hollow.
=> cell, clandestine, conceal, hall, hell, occult
human: human: [14] Human comes via Old French humain from Latin hūmānus. Like homō ‘person’, this was related to Latin humus ‘earth’, and was used originally for ‘people’ in the sense ‘earthly beings’ (in contrast with the immortal gods). Humane is essentially the same word, and became established in the 18th century as a distinct spelling (and pronunciation) for two or three specific senses of human. Other English derivatives include humanism [19], humanity [14], and humanitarian [19].
=> humane, humble, humus
humble: humble: [13] Etymologically, humble means ‘close to the ground’. It comes via Old French umble from Latin humilis ‘low, lowly’. This was a derivative of humus ‘earth’, which is related to English chameleon and human and was itself acquired by English in the 18th century. In postclassical times the verb humiliāre was formed from humilis, and English gets humiliate [16] from it.
=> chameleon, human, humiliate, humus
humble pie: humble pie: [17] Until the 19th century, humble pie was simply a pie made from the internal organs of a deer or other animal (‘Mrs Turner did bring us an umble pie hot out of her oven’, Samuel Pepys, Diary 8 July 1663). Humble has no etymological connection with the adjective humble ‘meek’; it is an alteration of the now extinct numbles ‘offal’ [14] (which came ultimately from Latin lumulus, a diminutive of lumbus ‘loin’, from which English gets loin and lumbar). Numbles became umbles (perhaps from misanalysis of a numble as an umble in contexts such as numble pie), and from there it was a short step to humble; but the expression eat humble pie is not recorded in the sense ‘be humiliated’ until the 1830s.

It combines the notion of ‘food fit only for those of lowly status’ with a fortuitous resemblance to the adjective humble.
=> loin, lumbar
humiliate: humiliate: see humble
humour: humour: [14] Latin hūmēre meant ‘be moist’ (from it was derived hūmidus, source of English humid [16]). And related to it was the noun hūmor, which signified originally simply ‘liquid’. In due course it came to be applied specifically to any of the four bodily fluids (blood, phlegm, choler, and black bile) whose combinations according to medieval theories of physiology determined a person’s general health and temperament.

This was the sense in which English acquired the word, via Anglo-Norman humour, and it gradually developed in meaning via ‘mental disposition at a particular time, mood’ and ‘inclination, whim’ to, in the late 17th century, the main modern sense ‘funniness’.
=> humid
hump: hump: [18] Hump seems to have originated among the Low German dialects of North Germany and the Low Countries – Dutch, for instance, has the probably related homp ‘lump’. It first appeared in English towards the end of the 17th century in the compound hump-backed, but by the first decade of the 18th century it was being used on its own. (Another theory is that it arose from a blend of the now obsolete crumpbacked with hunchbacked [16], whose hunch- is of unknown origin.)
humus: humus: see humble
hundred: hundred: [OE] The main Old English word for ‘hundred’ was hund, whose history can be traced back via a prehistoric Germanic *khundam to Indo-European *kmtóm; this was also the source of Latin centum, Greek hekatón, and Sanskrit çatám, all meaning ‘hundred’. The form hundred did not appear until the 10th century. Its -red ending (represented also in German hundert, Dutch honderd, and Swedish hundrade) comes from a prehistoric Germanic *rath ‘number’.
=> cent, rate, thousand
hunger: hunger: [OE] Hunger is a widespread word in the Germanic languages, shared by German, Swedish, and Danish as well as English (Dutch spells it honger), but it is not represented in any of the other Indo-European languages. Indeed, no related forms have been identified for certain, although Greek kégkein ‘be hungry’ and Sanskrit kákat ‘be thirsty’ are possibilities.
hunt: hunt: [OE] Hunt is an ancient word, probably traceable back to an Indo-European *kend-, which also produced Swedish hinna ‘reach’. Its original Old English descendant was hentan ‘seize’, of which huntian (source of modern English hunt) was a derivative. Etymologically, therefore, hunt means ‘try to seize’.
=> hand
hurdle: hurdle: see hoard
hurricane: hurricane: [16] European voyagers first encountered the swirling winds of the hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, and they borrowed a local word to name it – Carib huracan. This found its way into English via Spanish. (An early alternative form was furacano, which came from a Carib variant furacan.)
hurry: hurry: [16] The earliest known occurrences of the verb hurry are in the plays of Shakespeare, who uses it quite frequently. This suggests that it may have been a word well known to him in his native West Midland dialect, but it is not clear whether it is identical with the horye that occurs in a 14th-century Middle English poem from the same general area. A possible relative is Middle High German hurren ‘move quickly’.
hurt: hurt: [12] English borrowed hurt from Old French hurter, which meant ‘knock’ (as its modern French descendant heurter still does). This sense died out in English in the 17th century, leaving only the metaphorically extended ‘wound, harm’. It is not clear where the Old French word came from, although it may ultimately be of Germanic origin. Hurtle [13], a derivative of hurt, also originally meant ‘knock’, and did not develop its present connotations of precipitate speed until the 16th century.
=> hurtle
husband: husband: [OE] The Anglo-Saxons used wer ‘man’ (as in werewolf) for ‘husband’, and not until the late 13th century was the word husband drafted in for ‘male spouse’. This had originally meant ‘master of a household’, and was borrowed from Old Norse húsbóndi, a compound formed from hús ‘house’ and bóndi. Bóndi in turn was a contraction of an earlier bóandi, búandi ‘dweller’, a noun use of the present participle of bóa, búa ‘dwell’, This was derived from the Germanic base *bū- ‘dwell’, which also produced English be, boor, booth, bound ‘intending to go’, bower, build, burly, byelaw, byre, and the -bour of neighbour.

The ancient link between ‘dwelling in a place’ and ‘farming the land’ comes out in husbandman [14] and husbandry [14], reflecting a now obsolete sense of husband, ‘farmer’. The abbreviated form hubby dates from the 17th century.
=> be, boor, booth, bower, build, byre, house
husk: husk: [14] Etymologically, a husk is probably a ‘little house’. It seems to have been adapted from Middle Dutch hūskijn, a diminutive form of hūs ‘house’ – the notion being, of course, that it ‘houses’ seeds or fruits. The derivative husky was coined in the 16th century; its use for ‘hoarse’ comes from the idea of having dry husks in the throat (the husky dog [19] is an entirely different word, probably an alteration of Eskimo).
=> house
hussar: hussar: [15] Ultimately, hussar is the same word as corsair. Its remote ancestor is Italian corsaro, which was borrowed via Old Serbian husar into Hungarian as huszár. This originally retained the meaning of corsair, ‘plunderer’, but gradually developed into ‘horseman’, and it was as ‘Hungarian horseman’ that English borrowed it.
=> corsair
husting: husting: [11] In the late Old English period, a husting was a sort of deliberative assembly or council summoned by the king. The word was borrowed from Old Norse hústhing, literally ‘house assembly’, which denoted a council consisting of members of the king’s immediate household, rather than a general assembly (thing, which is the same word as modern English thing, is represented in modern Scandinavian languages by ting or thing ‘parliament, court’).

In the 12th century the word came to be used for a court of law held in London’s Guildhall, which for many centuries was the City of London’s senior court, and in the 17th century it is recorded as meaning the ‘platform at the upper end of the Guildhall’, on which the Lord Mayor and Aldermen sat during sessions of the court. In the early 18th century this was transferred metaphorically to the ‘platform on which candidates stood to address electors’, and subsequently it was widened to include the whole ‘election proceedings’.
=> house, thing
hut: hut: [17] Etymologically, a hut is probably a ‘covering structure’. The word has plausibly been traced back to Germanic *khūd-, which also produced English hide and probably hoard, house, and huddle. This would have been the source of Middle High German hütte, which eventually found its way into French as hutte – whence English hut.
=> hide, hoard, house, huddle
ketchup: ketchup: [17] Ketchup is a Chinese word in origin. In the Amoy dialect of southeastern China, kôechiap means ‘brine of fish’. It was acquired by English, probably via Malay kichap, towards the end of the 17th century, when it was usually spelled catchup (the New Dictionary of the Canting Crew 1690 defines it as ‘a high East- India Sauce’). Shortly afterwards the spelling catsup came into vogue (Jonathan Swift is the first on record as using it, in 1730), and it remains the main form in American English. But in Britain ketchup has gradually established itself since the early 18th century.
posthumous: posthumous: [17] Latin postumus functioned as a superlative form of post ‘after’, and meant ‘last of all’. It was often applied to a child ‘born after the death of its father’, as being the final offspring that man could possibly have, and so began to pick up associations with the ‘period after death’. This led in turn to the perception of a link with humus ‘ground’ (source of English humble and humus) and humāre ‘bury’, and so postumus became posthumus. English adapted it direct from Latin.
rhubarb: rhubarb: [14] The Greeks had two words for ‘rhubarb’: rhéon, which was borrowed from Persian rēwend, and which evolved into Latin rheum, now the plant’s scientific name; and rha, which is said to have come from Rha, an ancient name of the river Volga, in allusion to the fact that rhubarb was once grown on its banks (rhubarb is native to China, and was once imported to Europe via Russia).

In medieval Latin rhubarb became known as rha barbarum ‘barbarian rhubarb, foreign rhubarb’, again with reference to the plant’s exotic origins; and in due course association with Latin rheum altered this to rheubarbarum. It passed into English via Vulgar Latin *rheubarbum and Old French reubarbe.
=> barbarian
shut: shut: [OE] Shut comes ultimately from the same prehistoric Germanic base (*skaut-, *skeut-, *skut- ‘project’) that produced English shoot, and its underlying etymological reference is to the ‘shooting’ of a bolt across a door to fasten it. Its immediate West Germanic ancestor was *skuttjan, which also produced Dutch schutten ‘obstruct’. In Old English this became scyttan, which if it had evolved unchecked would have given modern English shit. For reasons of delicacy, perhaps, the West Midlands form shut was drafted into the general language in the 16th century.
=> sheet, shoot, shot, shout, shuttle
shuttle: shuttle: [OE] A shuttle is etymologically something that is ‘shot’. Indeed, the word’s Old English precursor scytel meant ‘arrow’ or ‘dart’. It comes ultimately from the prehistoric Germanic base *skaut-, *skeut-, *skut- ‘project’, which also produced English shoot and shut. There is a gap between the disappearance of Old English scytel and the emergence of shuttle in the 14th century, but they are presumably the same word (a shuttle being something that is thrown or ‘shot’ across a loom).
=> shut
sulphur: sulphur: [14] The origins of Latin sulphur are not known, although it may have links with German schwefel ‘sulphur’. It has spread throughout the Romance languages (French soufre, Italian solfo, and, with the addition of Arabic al ‘the’, Spanish azufre), and has been borrowed into Dutch as sulfer and into English (where it eventually replaced the native brimstone [12], etymologically ‘burning stone’) as sulphur.
thug: thug: [19] Hindi thag means literally ‘robber, cheat’ (it is descended from Sanskrit sthaga ‘robber’, a derivative of sthagati ‘cover, hide’, which goes back ultimately to the Indo- European base *steg-, *teg- ‘cover’, source also of English deck, detect, integument, protect, thatch, etc). It came to be applied to members of a band of professional thieves and murderers in India, whose preferred method of dispatching their victims was strangulation (their other name was phansigar, literally ‘strangler’); and English took it over in the 1830s as a general term for a ‘brutally violent person’.
=> deck, detect, protect, thatch
thumb: thumb: [OE] The thumb is etymologically the ‘swollen’ part – an allusion to its greater thickness than the other fingers. Along with its relatives German daumen and Dutch duim, it goes back to a prehistoric West Germanic *thūmon. This in turn can be traced to Indo- European *tum- ‘swell’, which also produced English tumour and tumult. The b in thumb appeared in the early Middle English period, when it was still a two-syllable word (thumbe), and at first was pronounced, but it has fallen silent over the centuries.
=> thigh, thimble, tumour, tumult
thunder: thunder: [OE] Etymologically, thunder is nothing more than ‘noise’. In common with German donner, Dutch donder, and Danish torden, it goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *thonara-. This was descended from the Indo- European base *ton-, *tn- ‘resound’, which also produced the Latin verb tonāre ‘thunder’ (source of English astound, detonate, and stun) and the Latin noun tonitrus ‘thunder’ (source of French tonnerre ‘thunder’). Thursday is etymologically the ‘day of thunder’.
=> astound, detonate, stun, thursday, tornado
Thursday: Thursday: [OE] The Romans called the fourth day of the week diēs Iovis ‘Jupiter’s day’. When the Germanic peoples took over their system of naming days after the gods, or the planets they represented, they replaced Jupiter, the Roman sky-god, with the Germanic god of thunder, Thor, whose name comes from the same source as English thunder. This produced a prehistoric Germanic *thonaras daga-, which evolved into Old English thunresdæg. The modern form Thursday is partly due to association with Old Norse thórsdagr.
=> thunder
thus: thus: [OE] Thus is something of a mystery word. It presumably belongs to the family of words (that, there, etc) that go back to the prehistoric Germanic demonstrative base *tha-, but how its fits into the family tree is not clear. Its only close relative is Dutch dus ‘thus’.
typhus: typhus: see stew
yoghurt: yoghurt: [17] It has taken a long time for yoghurt to settle down orthographically, and the process is not yet complete. It was originally acquired (from Turkish yoghurt) in the 1620s as yoghurd, and since then spellings such as yaghourt, yooghort, yughard, yohourth, and yaourt (reflecting the fact that Turkish gh is silent) have been tried. Yoghurt still vies with yogurt.
acanthus (n.): 1660s, from Latin acanthus, from Greek akanthos, from ake "point, thorn" (see acrid) + anthos "flower" (see anther). So called for its large spiny leaves. A conventionalized form of the leaf is used in Corinthian capitals.
Ahura Mazda: from Avestan ahura- "spirit, lord," from Indo-Iranian *asuras, from suffixed form of PIE root *ansu- "spirit" (see Asgard) + Avestan mazda- "wise," from PIE *mens-dhe- "to set the mind," from root *men- "to think" (see mind (n.)).
ailanthus (n.): "tree of heaven," 1807, Modern Latin, from Amboyna (Malay) ailanto "tree of the gods;" spelling altered by influence of Greek anthos "flower" (see anther).
Arthur: masc. proper name, from Medieval Latin Arthurus/Arturus, from Welsh arth "bear," cognate with Greek arktos, Latin ursus (see Arctic).
Arthurian (adj.): "pertaining to the series of tales of British King Arthur and his knights," 1793, from Arthur + -ian.