英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

chestnut [chestnut 词源字典]: 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[chestnut etymology, chestnut origin, 英语词源]
fortnight: fortnight: [13] The ancient Germanic peoples recorded the passing of time in units of ‘nights’ rather than, as we do, in units of ‘days’: hence a period of two weeks was in Old English fēowertīene niht, or ‘fourteen nights’. By early Middle English times this was starting to be contracted to the single word fortnight. (The parallel sennight ‘week’ [15] – literally ‘seven nights’ – survived dialectally into the 20th century.)
=> fourteen
lightning: lightning: [14] Etymologically, lightning is simply something that illuminates, or ‘lightens’, the sky. The word is a contraction of an earlier lightening, a derivative of lighten ‘make light’. The Old English word for ‘lightning’ was lēget, which is related to light. In Middle English it became leit, and later leiting, but in the 14th century lightning took over as the main form.
=> light
partner: partner: [14] Partner is related to part – but not quite so directly as might appear. When it first entered the language it was in the form parcener [13], which remains in existence as a legal term meaning ‘joint heir’. This came via Anglo- Norman parcener ‘partner’ from Vulgar Latin *partiōnārius, a derivative of Latin partītiō ‘partition’ (source of English partition [15]). This in turn was based on the verb partīrī ‘divide up’, a derivative of pars ‘part’. The change from parcener to partner began in the 14th century, prompted by the similarity to part.
=> part, partition
sputnik: sputnik: [20] Russian sputnik means literally ‘travelling companion’ (it is formed from s ‘with’ and put ‘way, journey’, with the agent suffix -nik). The Soviets gave the name to the series of Earth-orbiting satellites that they launched between 1957 and 1961. The first bleeps from space in October 1957 came as a severe shock to the West, which had not thought Soviet science capable of such a thing, and immediately propelled sputnik into the English language (the politically charged English version ‘fellow traveller’, which is more strictly a translation of Russian popútchik, was tried for a time, but never caught on).

It became one of the ‘in’ words of the late 1950s, and did much to popularize the suffix -nik in English (as in beatnik and peacenik).
witness: witness: [OE] Witness originally meant ‘knowledge’ or ‘wisdom’; it was simply an abstract noun formed from wit. This was extended via ‘knowledge gained by observation’ to ‘testimony’ in the Old English period, and by the beginning of the Middle English period ‘person who gives testimony’ was well established.
=> wit
alertness (n.): 1714, from alert + -ness.
aptness (n.): 1530s, from apt + -ness.
beatnik (n.): coined 1958 by San Francisco newspaper columnist Herb Caen during the heyday of -nik suffixes in the wake of Sputnik. From Beat generation (1952), associated with beat (n.) in its meaning "rhythm (especially in jazz)" as well as beat (past participle adjective) "worn out, exhausted," but originator Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) in 1958 connected it with beatitude.
The origins of the word beat are obscure, but the meaning is only too clear to most Americans. More than the feeling of weariness, it implies the feeling of having been used, of being raw. It involves a sort of nakedness of the mind. ["New York Times Magazine," Oct. 2, 1952]

"Beat" is old carny slang. According to Beat Movement legend (and it is a movement with a deep inventory of legend), Ginsberg and Kerouac picked it up from a character named Herbert Huncke, a gay street hustler and drug addict from Chicago who began hanging around Times Square in 1939 (and who introduced William Burroughs to heroin, an important cultural moment). The term has nothing to do with music; it names the condition of being beaten down, poor, exhausted, at the bottom of the world. [Louis Menand, "New Yorker," Oct. 1, 2007]
bluntness (n.): late 15c., "stupidity," from blunt (adj.) + -ness. Meaning "rudeness" is from c. 1600.
brightness (n.): Old English beorhtnes "brightness, clearness, splendor, beauty;" see bright + -ness.
catnap (n.): also cat-nap, cat's nap, by 1823, from cat (n.) + nap (n.). A nap such as a cat takes. As a verb from 1859.
catnip (n.): 1712, American English, from cat (n.) + nip, from Old English nepte "catnip," from Latin nepta, name of an aromatic herb. The older name is Middle English catmint (mid-13c.).
chestnut (n.): 1560s, from chesten nut (1510s), with superfluous nut (n.) + Middle English chasteine, from Old French chastain (12c., Modern French châtaigne), from Latin castanea "chestnut, chestnut tree," from Greek kastaneia, which the Greeks thought meant either "nut from Castanea" in Pontus, or "nut from Castana" in Thessaly, but probably both places are named for the trees, not the other way around, and the word is borrowed from a language of Asia Minor (compare Armenian kask "chestnut," kaskeni "chestnut tree"). In reference to the dark reddish-brown color, 1650s. Applied to the horse-chestnut by 1832.

Slang sense of "venerable joke or story" is from 1885, explained 1888 by Joseph Jefferson (see "Lippincott's Monthly Magazine," January 1888) as probably abstracted from the 1816 melodrama "The Broken Sword" by William Dimond where an oft-repeated story involving a chestnut tree figures in an exchange between the characters "Captain Zavior" and "Pablo":
Zav. Let me see--ay! it is exactly six years since that peace being restored to Spain, and my ship paid off, my kind brother offered me a snug hammock in the dwelling of my forefathers. I mounted a mule at Barcelona and trotted away for my native mountains. At the dawn of the fourth day's journey, I entered the wood of Collares, when, suddenly, from the thick boughs of a cork-tree--
Pab. [Jumping up.] A chesnut, Captain, a chesnut!
Zav. Bah, you booby! I say, a cork!
Pab. And I swear, a chesnut. Captain, this is the twenty-seventh time I have heard you relate this story, and you invariably said, a chesnut, till now.
Jefferson traced the connection through William Warren, "the veteran comedian of Boston" who often played Pablo in the melodrama.
chetnik (n.): "member of a Balkan guerrilla force," 1904, from Serbian četnik, from četa "band, troop."
chutney (n.): 1813, from Hindi chatni.
Etna: volcano in Sicily, from Latin Aetna, from an indigenous Sicilian language, *aith-na "the fiery one," from PIE *ai-dh-, from root *ai- (2) "to burn" (see edifice). Related: Etnean.
exactness (n.): 1560s, "perfection," from exact (adj.) + -ness. Meaning "precision" is 1640s.
eye-witness (n.): also eyewitness, 1530s, from eye (n.) + witness (n.). As a verb from 1844. Related: Eyewitnessed; eyewitnessing.
faintness (n.): early 14c., "feebleness, weariness," from faint (adj.) + -ness. Meaning "exhaustion" is mid-15c. Of color, light, etc., from 1640s.
fastness (n.): "a place not easily forced, a stronghold," late Old English fæstnes "firmness, strongness, massiveness, stability; the firmament," from fast (adj.) in its older sense of "firm, fixed in place" + -ness.
fatness (n.): Old English fætnesse; see fat (adj.) + -ness.
fitness (n.): 1570s, "state or quality of being suitable," from fit (adj.) + -ness. Meaning "state of being physically fit" is from 1935.
flatness (n.): mid-15c., "state or quality of being flat," from flat (adj.) + -ness.
footnote (n.): also foot-note, 1841, from foot (n.) "lower end of a document" (1660s) + note (n.). So called from its original position at the foot of a page. Also sometimes formerly bottom note. As a verb, from 1864. Related: Footnoted; footnoting.
fortnight (n.): "period of two weeks," 17c. contraction of Middle English fourteniht, from Old English feowertyne niht, literally "fourteen nights," preserving the ancient Germanic custom of reckoning by nights (mentioned by Tacitus in "Germania" xi). Related: Fortnightly.
greatness (n.): late Old English gretnys "thickness, coarseness, stoutness;" see great + -ness. Meaning "eminence" is early 14c.
Gretna Green: town in Scotland just across the border, proverbial from late 18c. as the customery place for English couples to run off and be married without parental consent.
horse-chestnut (n.): 1590s, from horse + chestnut. A tree probably native to Asia, introduced in England c. 1550; the name also was extended to similar North American species such as the buckeye. Said to have been so called because it was food for horses. The nut resembles that of the edible chestnut but is bitter to the taste.
inertness (n.): 1660s, from inert + -ness.
jitney (n.): "bus which carries passengers for a fare," 1915, short for jitney bus (1906), American English, from gitney, said to be slang for any small coin, especially "a nickel," because the buses' fare typically was a nickel, the coin name perhaps via New Orleans from French jeton "coin-sized metal disk, slug, counter," from Old French jeter "to calculate," literally "to throw" (see jet (v.)).
"I'll give a nickel for a kiss,"
Said Cholly to a pretty miss.
"Skiddo," she cried, "you stingy cuss,"
"You're looking for a jitney buss."

["Jitney Jingle," 1915]
The origin and signification of the word was much discussed when the buses first appeared. Some reports say the slang word for "nickel" comes from the bus; most say the reverse, but there does not seem to be much record of jitney in a coin sense before the buses came along (a writer in "The Hub," August 1915, claims to have heard and used it as a small boy in San Francisco, and reported hearsay that "It has been in use there since the days of '49." In some sources it is said to be a St. Louis word, but most credit it to the U.S. West, especially California, though others trace it to "southern negroes, especially in Memphis" ["The Pacific," Feb. 7, 1915].
justness (n.): early 15c., from just (adj.) + -ness.
lightness (n.): "quality of having little weight," late Old English, from light (adj.1) + -ness.
lightning (n.): late 13c., present participle of lightnen "make bright," extended form of Old English lihting, from leht (see light (n.)). Meaning "cheap, raw whiskey" is attested from 1781, also sometimes "gin." Lightning bug is attested from 1778. Lightning rod from 1790.
mustn't: by mid-18c., contraction of must not; see must (v).
neatnik (n.): "excessively tidy person," 1959, from neat (adj.) with a punning play on beatnik.
outness (n.): 1709, from out (adv.) + -ness.
outnumber (v.): "to number more than," 1660s, from out + number (v.). Related: Outnumbered; outnumbering.
partner (n.): c. 1300, altered from parcener (late 13c.), from Old French parçonier "partner, associate; joint owner, joint heir," from parçon "partition, division. portion, share, lot," from Latin partitionem (nominative partitio) "a sharing, partition, division, distribution" (see partition (n.)). Form in English influenced by part (n.). The word also may represent Old French part tenour "part holder."
partner (v.): 1610s, transitive, "to make a partner," from partner (n.). Intransitive sense from 1961. Related: Partnered; partnering.
partnership (n.): 1570s, from partner (n.) + -ship. In the commercial sense from c. 1700.
postnatal (adj.): 1831, from post- + natal.
promptness (n.): 1520s, from prompt (adj.) + -ness.
scantness (n.): late 14c., from scant (adj.) + -ness. Chaucer uses scantity.
setness (n.): 1640s, from set (n.2) + -ness. Old English had setnes, which was pressed into service to translate various ideas in Roman law and Christianity: "foundation, creation, construction; size, extent; law, ordinance; instruction; sentence."
shortness (n.): Old English scortnes; see short (adj.) + -ness. Shortness of breath is from 1570s.
smartness (n.): c. 1300, "severity," from smart (adj.) + -ness. From 1752 as "trimness," 1800 as "cleverness."
softness (n.): Old English softnes "ease, comfort; state of being soft to the touch; luxury;" see soft (adj.) + -ness. Meaning "weakness of character, effeminacy" is from c. 1600.
sputnik (n.): "artificial satellite," extended from the name of the one launched by the Soviet Union Oct. 4, 1957, from Russian sputnik "satellite," literally "traveling companion" (in this use short for sputnik zemlyi, "traveling companion of the Earth") from Old Church Slavonic supotiniku, from Russian so-, s- "with, together" + put' "path, way," from Old Church Slavonic poti, from PIE *pent- "to tread, go" (see find (v.)) + agent suffix -nik.

The electrifying impact of the launch on the West can be gauged by the number of new formations in -nik around this time (the suffix had been present in a Yiddish context for at least a decade before); Laika, the stray dog launched aboard Sputnik 2 (Nov. 2, 1957), which was dubbed muttnik in the "Detroit Free Press," etc. The rival U.S. satellite which failed to reach orbit in 1957 (because the Vanguard rocket blew up on the launch pad) derided as a kaputnik (in the "Daytona Beach Morning Journal"), a dudnik ("Christian Science Monitor"), a flopnik ("Youngstown Vindicator," "New York Times"), a pffftnik ("National Review"), and a stayputnik ("Vancouver Sun").
sweetness (n.): Old English swetnes; see sweet (adj.) + -ness.