英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

aim: aim: [14] Etymologically, aim is a contraction of estimate (see ESTEEM). The Latin verb aestimāre became considerably shortened as it developed in the various Romance languages (Italian has stimare, for instance, and Provençal esmar). In Old French its descendant was esmer, to which was added the prefix a- (from Latin ad- ‘to’), producing aesmer; and from one or both of these English acquired aim. The notion of estimating or calculating was carried over into the English verb, but died out after about a hundred years. However, the derived sense of calculating, and hence directing, one’s course is of equal antiquity in the language.
=> esteem, estimate
barge: barge: [13] Barge comes in the first instance from Old French barge, but speculation has pushed it further back to medieval Latin *barica, which would have derived from báris, a Greek word for an Egyptian boat. This hypothetical *barica would have been a by-form of late Latin barca, which came into English via Old French as barque, also spelled bark, ‘sailing vessel’ [15] (source of embark). The metaphorical use of the verb barge, ‘move clumsily or rudely’, is barely a hundred years old; it comes from the ponderous progress made by barges.
=> bark, barque, embark
breast: breast: [OE] Breast can be traced back via prehistoric Germanic *breustam to an Indo- European base *bhrus- or *bhreus-, whose other descendants, including Old Saxon brustian ‘bud’, Middle High German briustern ‘swell’, and Irish brú ‘abdomen, womb’, suggest that the underlying reference contained in the word may be to the growth and swelling of the female breasts. By the time it reached Old English, as brēost, it had already developed a more general, non-sex-specific sense ‘chest’, but the meaning element ‘mammary gland’ has remained throughout, and indeed over the past two hundred years ‘chest’ has grown steadily more archaic.
bulimia: bulimia: [19] The condition now called ‘bulimia’ – in which bouts of overeating are followed by bouts of purging – was recognized and so named in the 1970s. The word used to name it, however, is much more ancient than that. It goes back to Greek boulimia, which meant ‘ravenous hunger’ (it was formed from limos ‘hunger’, with the prefix bou-; this may well have been adapted from bous ‘ox’, in which case the word would have meant literally ‘the hunger of an ox’).

It originally came into English, via medieval Latin, in the late 14th century, and for many hundred years its standard form was bulimy. It was applied to a sort of hunger so extreme that it could be categorized as an illness.
cesspool: cesspool: [17] Cesspool has no direct etymological connection with pool. It comes from Old French suspirail ‘ventilator, breathing hole’, a derivative of souspirer ‘breathe’ (this goes back to Latin suspīrāre, source of the archaic English suspire ‘sigh’). This was borrowed into English in the early 15th century as suspiral ‘drainpipe’, which in the subsequent two hundred years appeared in a variety of spellings, including cesperalle.

By the early 16th century we find evidence of its being used not just for a pipe to drain matter away, but also for a well or tank to receive matter thus drained (originally any effluent, not just sewage). The way was thus open for a ‘reinterpretation’ of the word’s final element as pool (by the process known as folk etymology), and in the late 17th century the form cesspool emerged.

By analogy, as if there were really a word cess ‘sewage’, the term cesspit was coined in the mid-19th century.
=> suspire
champagne: champagne: [17] Champagne comes (as does campaign) from late Latin campānia, a derivative of Latin campus ‘open field’ (source of English camp). This passed into Old French as champagne ‘open country’, a word borrowed into English in the 14th century as champaign (now archaic). It came to be applied specifically to a province of northeastern France (an area largely of open rolling countryside) and hence to the wine produced in that area.

There are references to ‘brisk Champagne’ and ‘sparkling Champagne’ in English from the 1660s and 1670s, but it was not until about two hundred years ago that modern champagne, produced by secondary fermentation in bottle, was invented (according to legend, by the monk Dom Perignon).
=> camp, campaign, champion
chestnut: chestnut: [16] The Greek word for ‘chestnut’ was kastanéā, which appears to have meant originally ‘nut from Castanea’ (in Pontus, Asia Minor) or ‘nut from Castana’ (in Thessaly, Greece). It came into English via Latin castanea and Old French chastaine, which in the 14th century produced the Middle English form chasteine or chesteine. Over the next two hundred years this developed to chestern, and in due course had nut added to it to produce the modern English form. Castana, the Spanish descendant of Latin castanea, is the source of castanet.
=> castanet
creature: creature: [13] Creature and creator, both 13thcentury borrowings from Old French, predate the introduction of the verb create into English by about a hundred years. This was a verbal use of an earlier adjective create, borrowed directly from Latin creātus, the past participle of creāre ‘produce’ (which in turn may have been a causative derivative of the verb crēscere ‘grow’, source of English crescent). Another descendant of Latin creāre was Portuguese criar ‘breed, nurse’, the probable ancestor of English creole [17].
=> create, creole, crescent, croissant, increase
drab: drab: [16] Drab is a variant of the now obsolete form drap, which was borrowed from Old French drap ‘cloth’ (source also of English drape, draper, and trappings). It was originally a noun meaning ‘cloth’ in English too, but the beginnings of its transition to the modern English adjective meaning ‘faded and dull’ can be seen in the 17th century.

The word came to be used particularly for natural undyed cloth, of a dull yellowish-brown colour, and hence for the colour itself (an application best preserved in the olive-drab colour of American service uniforms). The figurative development to ‘dull and faded’ is a comparatively recent one, first recorded a little over a hundred years ago.
=> drape, trappings
duet: duet: [18] The original term for ‘two musicians’ was Italian duo, a descendant of Latin duo ‘two’. English acquired this in the 16th century. But Italian (the major source of Western musical vocabulary) also produced a diminutive form duetto, literally ‘little duo’, which English borrowed either directly (the unanglicized form duetto was used in English for about a hundred years from the 1720s) or perhaps via German duett.
=> two
elope: elope: [17] Etymologically, elope signifies ‘leap away’. It was originally an Anglo-Norman legal term applied to a married woman running off with a lover, and only in the past couple of hundred years has it come to be applied to a couple leaving home to get married when parental permission is denied. It is thought that the Anglo-Norman term was an adaptation of Middle English *alopen, past participle of an unrecorded verb *alepen ‘run away’, which would have been formed from the prefix a- ‘away’ and lepen ‘run, leap’ (source of modern English leap and related to lope and German laufen ‘run’).
=> leap, lope
ermine: ermine: [12] The term ermine was introduced to English from Old French as a name for the ‘stoat’, but as in the case of other words of French origin like mutton and pork which soon came to be used for the dead animals’ product rather than the live animals themselves, it was not long (about a hundred years in fact) before ermine was being applied to the stoat’s fur, and specifically to its white winter fur.

The source of the French word is not entirely clear. One school of thought derives it from medieval Latin mūs Armenius ‘Armenian mouse’, on the assumption that this denoted a ‘stoat’ or ‘weasel’, but an alternative possibility is Germanic origin.
ethical: ethical: [17] The underlying meaning of Greek ēthos was ‘personal disposition’. It came ultimately from prehistoric Indo-European *swedh-, a compound formed from the reflexive pronoun *swe- ‘oneself’ and dhē- ‘put’ (from which English gets do). Gradually the meaning broadened out to ‘trait, character’ and then ‘custom’, or in the plural ‘manners’ or ‘morals’.

English acquired it, in the sense ‘distinctive characteristic’ (based on the usage of Aristotle), in the 19th century. The Greek derived adjective ēthikós entered English, via Latin ēthicus, as ethic in the 16th century. This had largely been replaced by ethical by the end of the 17th century, but it has survived as a noun (as in ‘the work ethic’), which actually predates the adjective in English by about two hundred years.

The plural usage ethics ‘science of morals’ dates from the beginning of the 17th century.
=> do
ghost: ghost: [OE] In Old English times, ghost was simply a synonym for ‘spirit’ or ‘soul’ (a sense preserved in Holy Ghost); it did not acquire its modern connotations of the ‘disembodied spirit of a dead person appearing among the living’ until the 14th century. However, since it has been traced back to Indo-European *ghois- or *gheis-, which also produced Old Norse geisa ‘rage’, Sanskrit hédas ‘anger’, and Gothic usgaisjan ‘terrify’, it could well be that its distant ancestor denoted as frightening concept as the modern English word does.

The Old English form of the word was gāst, which in Middle English became gost; the gh- spelling, probably inspired by Flemish gheest, first appeared at the end of the 15th century, and gradually established itself over the next hundred years.
=> poltergeist
graft: graft: [15] Graft, in its original sense ‘plant part inserted into a living plant’ (the application to skin and other animal tissue is a late 19thcentury development), came from its resemblance in shape to a pencil. Greek graphíon meant ‘writing implement, stylus’ (it was a derivative of the verb gráphein ‘write’, source of English graphic). It passed via Latin graphium into Old French as grafe, gradually changing in its precise application with the advance of writing technology.

By the time it reached Old French it denoted a ‘pencil’, and it was then that the resemblance to two artificially united plant stems was noted and the metaphor born. English took the word over as graff in the late 14th century (it actually survived in that form into the 19th century), and within a hundred years had added a -t to the end to give modern English graft. Graft ‘corruption’, first recorded in mid 19th-century America, may be the same word, perhaps derived from the notion of a graft as an ‘insertion’, hence ‘something extra, on the side’. Graft ‘hard work’ [19], on the other hand, is probably a different word, perhaps based on the English dialect verb graft ‘dig’, an alteration of grave ‘dig’.
=> graphic
howitzer: howitzer: [17] Czech houfnice denotes a ‘large catapult’ for hurling stones at the enemy. It was borrowed into German as houfenitz, and this made its way into English as howitz at the end of the 17th century. This had died out within a hundred years, but at around the same time English acquired howitzer, probably via Dutch houwitser, which has stood the test of time.
interest: interest: [15] The Latin verb interesse meant literally ‘be between’ (it was a compound of inter ‘between’ and esse ‘be’). It was used metaphorically for ‘be of concern, be important, matter’, and appears to have been borrowed into Anglo-Norman as a noun, meaning ‘what one has a legal concern in or share of’. English took this over in the 14th century as interesse, but it gradually changed over the next hundred years or so into interest, mainly due to the influence of Old French interest ‘damage’, which came from the third person present singular form of the Latin verb.

The main modern sense ‘curiosity’ developed towards the end of the 18th century.
jet: jet: English has two distinct words jet. The older, which denotes a type of black stone used in jewellery [14], comes via Old French jaiet and Latin gagātēs from Greek gagátēs, which denoted ‘stone from Gagai’, a town in Lycia, in Asia Minor, where it was found. The jet of ‘jet engines’ [16] goes back ultimately to a word that meant ‘throw’ – Latin jacere (from which English also gets inject, project, reject, etc).

A derivative of this was jactāre, which also meant ‘throw’. It passed via Vulgar Latin *jectāre into Old French as jeter, and when English took it over it was originally used for ‘protrude, stick out’: ‘the houses jetting over aloft like the poops of ships, to shadow the streets’, George Sandys, Travels 1615. This sense is perhaps best preserved in jetty ‘projecting pier’, and in the variant form jut [16], while the underlying meaning ‘throw’ is still present in jettison ‘throw things overboard’ and its contracted form jetsam.

But back with the verb jet, in the 17th century it began to be used for ‘spurt out in a forceful stream’. The notion of using such a stream to create forward motion was first encapsulated in the term jet propulsion in the mid 19th century, but it did not take concrete form for nearly a hundred years (the term jet engine is not recorded until 1943).
=> inject, jetsam, jettison, jetty, jut, project, reject, subject
knight: knight: [OE] The word knight has come up in the world over the centuries. In the Old English period it simply meant ‘boy’ or ‘young man’. By the 10th century it had broadened out to ‘male servant’, and within a hundred years of that we find it being used for ‘military servant, soldier’. This is the general level or ‘rank’ at which the word’s continental relatives, German and Dutch knecht, have remained.

But in England, in the course of the early Middle Ages, knight came to denote, in the feudal system, ‘one who bore arms in return for land’, and later ‘one raised to noble rank in return for military service’. The modern notion of knighthood as a rung in the nobility, without any necessary connotations of military prowess, dates from the 16th century.
prude: prude: [18] Old French prudefemme ‘virtuous woman’ meant literally ‘fine thing of a woman’. It was a lexicalization of the phrase *preu de femme, in which preu meant ‘fine, brave, virtuous’ (its variant prud gave English proud). In the 17th century it was shortened to prude (Molière is the first writer on record as using it), with distinctly negative connotations of ‘overvirtuousness’. It was borrowed into English at the beginning of the 18th century, and for a couple of hundred years continued to be used almost exclusively with reference to women.
=> proud
reticent: reticent: [19] The ultimate source of reticent is Latin tacēre ‘be silent’ (source of English tacit and taciturn). Combination with the intensive prefix re- produced reticēre ‘keep silent’, whose present participle gave English reticent. It was preceded into the language by over two hundred years by the derived noun reticence.
=> tacit, taciturn
robin: robin: [15] Robin was borrowed from the French male first name Robin, a familiar form of Robert, which is first recorded as a bird-name in the 15th century. It originally appeared in English, in the mid-15th century, in the expression robin redbreast, and robin was not used on its own until about a hundred years later. Since then its has gradually ousted the native ruddock (a relative of red) as the standard term for the bird. (The name Robert, incidentally, is of Germanic origin, and means etymologically ‘famebright’.)
shire: shire: [OE] The original meaning of shire, which did not survive beyond the Old English period, was ‘official charge, administrative office’, and it has been suggested that the word is related ultimately to Latin cūra ‘care, charge’ (source of English curate, cure, etc). Already by the 9th century it was being used for an ‘administrative area ruled by a governor’, and over the next hundred years the application to what is now known as a county emerged. (County itself was introduced in the 14th century, and gradually ousted shire.) Sheriff is a compound based on shire.
=> sheriff
slug: slug: English has at least two, possibly four distinct words slug. The oldest, ‘shell-less mollusc’ [15], originally meant ‘slow or lazy person’. It was not applied to the slow-moving animal until the 18th century. It was probably a borrowing from a Scandinavian source (Norwegian has a dialectal slugg ‘large heavy body’). A similar ancestor, such as Swedish dialect slogga ‘be lazy’, may lie behind the now obsolete English verb slug ‘be lazy’, from which were derived sluggard [14] and sluggish [14]. Slug ‘bullet’ [17] is of uncertain origin.

It may have come from slug ‘mollusc’, in allusion to the shape of the animal, but that suggestion depends on the supposition that slug was being used for the mollusc at least a hundred years before our earliest written record of it. Slug ‘swig of drink’ [18] may be the same word, but it has also been speculated that it comes from Irish Gaelic slog ‘swallow’. Slug ‘hit’ [19] and the related slog [19] probably go back ultimately to the prehistoric Germanic base *slakh-, *slag-, *slōg- ‘hit’ (source of English slaughter, slay, etc).
=> slog
hundred (n.): Old English hundred "the number of 100, a counting of 100," from Proto-Germanic *hundrath (cognates: Old Norse hundrað, German hundert); first element is Proto-Germanic *hundam "hundred" (cognate with Gothic hund, Old High German hunt), from PIE *km-tom "hundred," reduced from *dkm-tom- (cognates: Sanskrit satam, Avestan satem, Greek hekaton, Latin centum, Lithuanian simtas, Old Church Slavonic suto, Old Irish cet, Breton kant "hundred"), from *dekm- "ten" (see ten).

Second element is Proto-Germanic *rath "reckoning, number" (as in Gothic raþjo "a reckoning, account, number," garaþjan "to count;" see read (v.)). The common word for the number in Old English was simple hund, and Old English also used hund-teontig.
In Old Norse hundrath meant 120, that is the long hundred of six score, and at a later date, when both the six-score hundred and the five-score hundred were in use, the old or long hundred was styled hundrath tolf-roett ... meaning "duodecimal hundred," and the new or short hundred was called hundrath ti-rætt, meaning "decimal hundred." "The Long Hundred and its use in England" was discussed by Mr W.H. Stevenson, in 1889, in the Archcæological Review (iv. 313-27), where he stated that amongst the Teutons, who longest preserved their native customs unimpaired by the influence of Latin Christianity, the hundred was generally the six-score hundred. The short hundred was introduced among the Northmen in the train of Christianity. ["Transactions" of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society, 1907]
Meaning "division of a county or shire with its own court" (still in some British place names and U.S. state of Delaware) was in Old English and probably represents 100 hides of land. The Hundred Years War (which ran intermittently from 1337 to 1453) was first so called in 1874. The original Hundred Days was the period between Napoleon's restoration and his final abdication in 1815.
jump (v.): 1520s, perhaps imitative (compare bump); another theory derives it from words in Gallo-Roman dialects of southwestern France (compare jumba "to rock, to balance, swing," yumpa "to rock"), picked up during English occupation in Hundred Years War. Superseded native leap, bound, and spring in most senses. Meaning "to attack" is from 1789; that of "to do the sex act with" is from 1630s. Related: Jumped; jumping. To jump to a conclusion is from 1704. Jumping-rope is from 1805. Jump in a lake "go away and stop being a pest" attested from 1912.
knight (n.): Old English cniht "boy, youth; servant, attendant," common West Germanic (cognates: Old Frisian kniucht, Dutch knecht, Middle High German kneht "boy, youth, lad," German Knecht "servant, bondman, vassal"), of unknown origin. The plural in Middle English sometimes was knighten. Meaning "military follower of a king or other superior" is from c. 1100. Began to be used in a specific military sense in Hundred Years War, and gradually rose in importance until it became a rank in the nobility 16c. The chess piece so called from mid-15c. Knight in shining armor in figurative sense is from 1917, from the man who rescues the damsel in distress in romantic dramas (perhaps especially "Lohengrin"). Knights of Columbus, society of Catholic men, founded 1882 in New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.; Knights of Labor, trade union association, founded in Philadelphia, 1869; Knights of Pythias, secret order, founded in Washington, 1864.