英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

antelope [antelope 词源字典]: antelope: [15] Antelope comes from medieval Greek antholops. In the Middle Ages it was applied to an outlandish but figmentary beast, in the words of the Oxford English Dictionary, ‘haunting the banks of the Euphrates, very savage, hard to catch, having long saw-like horns with which they cut in pieces and broke all “engines” and even cut down trees’. The term was subsequently used for a heraldic animal, but it was not until the early 17th century that it was applied, by the naturalist Edward Topsell, to the swift-running deerlike animal for which it is now used.
[antelope etymology, antelope origin, 英语词源]
arbour: arbour: [14] Despite its formal resemblance to, and semantic connections with, Latin arbor ‘tree’, arbour is not etymologically related to it. In fact, its nearest English relative is herb. When it first came into English it was erber, which meant ‘lawn’ or ‘herb/flower garden’. This was borrowed, via Anglo-Norman, from Old French erbier, a derivative of erbe ‘herb’.

This in turn goes back to Latin herba ‘grass, herb’ (in the 16th century a spelling with initial h was common in England). Gradually, it seems that the sense ‘grassy plot’ evolved to ‘separate, secluded nook in a garden’; at first, the characteristic feature of such shady retreats was their patch of grass, but their seclusion was achieved by surrounding trees or bushes, and eventually the criterion for an arbour shifted to ‘being shaded by trees’.

Training on a trellis soon followed, and the modern arbour as ‘bower’ was born. The shift from grass and herbaceous plants to trees no doubt prompted the alteration in spelling from erber to arbour, after Latin arbor; this happened in the 15th and 16th centuries.
=> herb
balm: balm: [13] In origin, balm and balsam are the same word. Both come via Latin balsamum from Greek bálsamon, an ‘aromatic oily resin exuded from certain trees’. Its ultimate source may have been Hebrew bāśām ‘spice’. Latin balsamum passed into Old French, and thence into English, as basme or baume (hence the modern English pronunciation), and in the 15th to 16th centuries the Latin l was restored to the written form of the word. The new borrowing balsam, direct from Latin, was made in the 15th century.
=> balsam
banyan: banyan: [17] Banyan originally meant ‘Hindu trader’. It is an arabization of Gujarati vāniyān ‘traders’, which comes ultimately from Sanskrit vanija ‘merchant’ (the Portuguese version, banian, produced an alternative English spelling). When European travellers first visited Bandar Abbas, a port on the Persian Gulf, they found there a pagoda which the banyans had built in the shade of a large Indian fig tree. They immediately applied the name banyan to this particular tree, and the term later widened to include all such trees.
barnacle: barnacle: [12] The term barnacle was originally applied to a type of goose, Branta leucopsis, which according to medieval legend grew on trees or on logs of wood. Various fanciful versions of its reproductive cycle existed, among them that it emerged from a fruit or that it grew attached to a tree by its beak, but the most tenacious was that it developed inside small shellfish attached to wood, rocks, etc by the seashore.

Hence by the end of the 16th century the term had come to be applied to these shellfish, and today that is its main sense. The word was originally bernak (it gained its -le ending in the 15th century) and came from medieval Latin bernaca, but its ultimate source is unknown.
benzene: benzene: [19] The original name given to this hydrocarbon, by the German chemist Eilhardt Mitscherlich in 1833, was benzine. He based it on the term benzoic acid, a derivative of benzoin, the name of a resinous substance exuded by trees of the genus Styrax. This came ultimately from Arabic lubān-jāwī, literally ‘frankincense of Java’ (the trees grow in Southeast Asia).

When the expression was borrowed into the Romance languages, the initial lu- was apprehended as the definite article, and dropped (ironically, since in so many Arabic words which do contain the article al, it has been retained as part and parcel of the word – see ALGEBRA). This produced a variety of forms, including French benjoin, Portuguese beijoim, and Italian benzoi.

English probably acquired the word mainly from French (a supposition supported by the folketymological alteration benjamin which was in common use in English from the end of the 16th century), but took the z from the Italian form. Meanwhile, back with benzine, in the following year, 1834, the German chemist Justus von Liebig proposed the alternative name benzol; and finally, in the 1870s, the chemist A W Hofmann regularized the form to currently accepted chemical nomenclature as benzene.
=> benzol
blaze: blaze: There are three distinct words blaze in English. The commonest, meaning ‘fire, flame’ [OE], comes from a prehistoric Germanic *blasōn. Its original signification was ‘torch’ (in the sense, of course, of a burning piece of wood or bunch of sticks), but by the year 1000 the main current meaning was established. The precise source of blaze ‘light-coloured mark or spot’ [17] is not known for certain, but there are several cognate forms in other Germanic languages, including Old Norse blesi and German blässe; perhaps the likeliest candidate as far as blaze is concerned is Middle Low German bles.

The verbal usage, as in ‘blaze a trail’ (that is, by making conspicuous marks on trees) originated in the mid 18th century. The related German adjective blass ‘pale’, which originally meant ‘shining’, points up the fact that ultimately these two words blaze are related, the primeval sense ‘shining’ having diverged on the one hand through ‘pale’, on the other through ‘glowing, burning’.

The third blaze, ‘proclaim’ [14], as in ‘blaze abroad’, is now seldom encountered. It originally meant ‘blow a trumpet’, and comes ultimately from the Indo-European base *bhlā- (source of blow). Its immediate source in English was Middle Dutch blāsen. Despite its formal and semantic similarity, it does not appear to have any connection with blazon [13], which comes from Old French blason ‘shield’, a word of unknown origin.

A blazer [19] got its name from being a brightly coloured jacket (from blaze meaning ‘fire, flame’). It originated among English university students in the late 19th century. According to a correspondent in the Daily News 22 August 1889, the word was originally applied specifically to the red jackets worn by members of the ‘Lady Margaret, St John’s College, Cambridge, Boat Club’.

But by the 1880s its more general application had become widely established: in the Durham University Journal of 21 February 1885 we read that ‘the latest novelty … for the river is flannels, a blazer, and spats’.
=> blow
blindfold: blindfold: [16] The original term for covering someone’s eyes with a bandage was blindfell [OE], which survived until the 16th century. This meant literally ‘strike someone blind’, the second element being the fell of ‘felling trees’. It appears that its past form, blindfelled, came to be mistaken for a present form, and this, together with some perceived connection with fold (presumably the ‘folding’ of the bandage round somebody’s head), conspired to produce the new verb blindfold.
coppice: coppice: [14] The notion underlying coppice is of ‘cutting’. Its ultimate source is the Greek noun kólaphos ‘blow’, which passed via Latin colaphus into medieval Latin as colpus (source of English cope and coup). From colpus was derived a verb colpāre ‘cut’, which formed the basis of Vulgar Latin colpātīcium ‘having the quality of being cut’. Its Old French descendant copeïz came to be applied to an area of small trees regularly cut back. English borrowed this as coppice (and in the 16th century spawned a new contracted form copse).
=> cope, copse, coup
coupé: coupé: [19] Coupé is the past participle of the French verb couper ‘cut’, and it was originally applied in the early 19th century to a type of four-wheeled covered carriage (in full a carrosse coupé ‘cut-off carriage’). The notion behind the term is a truncated version of an earlier type of coach, known as a berlin, achieved by removing the rear seat. The first record of its application to closed two-door cars comes in 1908.

The French verb couper is a derivative of the noun coup ‘blow’ (itself borrowed into English in the 18th century), which in turn came from medieval Latin colpus (ultimate source of English coppice, which etymologically denotes the ‘cutting down’ of trees). Earlier in time the word can be traced back via Latin colaphus to Greek kólaphos ‘blow, punch’.

A related word is coupon, borrowed from French in the 19th century.
=> coppice, copse, coup
decay: decay: [15] The notion underlying decay and its close relative decadence is of a ‘falling off’ from a condition of health or perfection. Decay comes from Old Northern French decair, a descendant of Vulgar Latin *dēcadere, which in turn came from Latin dēcidere, a compound verb formed from the prefix dē- ‘down, off, away’ and cadere ‘fall’ (source of English case and a wide range of related words). Decadence [16] was acquired via the medieval derivative dēcadentia. To the same word-family belongs deciduous [17], from Latin dēciduus, literally denoting the ‘falling off’ of leaves from trees.
=> accident, case, chance, decadence, deciduous
druid: druid: [16] Druid is, not surprisingly, of Celtic origin, although English probably acquired it via French druide or the Latin plural druides. The source of these forms was Gaulish druides, which came ultimately from Old Celtic *derwíjes. There are two opposing theories on the derivation of this: one is that it comes from an Old Celtic adjective derwos ‘true’ (source of Welsh derw ‘true’), in which case its etymological meaning would be ‘someone who says the truth’ (a parallel formation to English soothsayer); the other is that it was formed from the Old Celtic base *dru- ‘tree’ (source of Welsh derwen and Irish daur ‘oak-tree’ and related to Greek drus ‘oak’ and English tree) in reference to the central role played by oak-trees in druidic ceremonies.
eucalyptus: eucalyptus: [19] Europeans first encountered eucalyptus trees in Australia at the end of the 18th century. The French botanist Charles Louis l’Héritier based its Latin name, which he coined in 1788, on the fact that its flower buds have a characteristic conical cover (the Greek prefix eumeans ‘well’ and Greek kaluptós means ‘covered’).
hammock: hammock: [16] Hammock is a product of early European explorations in the New World. When Spanish crews first sailed into the Caribbean, they encountered a word in the Taino language of the Arawakan people for a hanging bed suspended between two trees. They adopted it into Spanish as hamaca, which English borrowed as hamaca or ‘Englished’ as hammaker (hammock is a 17th-century alteration).
jungle: jungle: [18] Not surprisingly, jungle is a tropical word, but its ancestor denoted quite the opposite of the lush vegetation it now refers to. It comes from Sanskrit jangala, which originally meant ‘dry’, and hence ‘desert’. Its Hindi descendant jangal was used for an ‘area of wasteland’, and hence ‘such an area overgrown with scrub’, and when it was taken over into Anglo-Indian it was gradually extended to an ‘area of thick tangled trees’.
mollusc: mollusc: [18] Etymologically, a mollusc is a ‘soft’ creature. The word comes ultimately from Latin molluscus ‘soft’, a derivative of mollis ‘soft’. In classical times it was used as a noun for various ‘soft’ things, such as a sort of thinshelled nut and a species of fungus that grew from maple trees, but its application to a range of invertebrate animals seems to have been introduced by the Swedish naturalist Linnaeus in the mid-18th century.

Latin mollis (source also of English mollify [15]) goes back ultimately to Indo-European *mel-, *mol-, *ml- ‘grind’, which also produced English meal ‘flour’, mill, and molar.
=> meal, melt, mild, mill, molar, mollify
moose: moose: [17] The moose’s name is a native American word. It comes from Natick moos, which has been linked by some with Narragansett moosu ‘he strips’, an allusion to the moose’s habit of stripping the bark from trees.
oak: oak: [OE] Oak is an ancient Germanic tree-name, shared by German (eiche), Dutch (eik), Swedish (ek), and Danish (eg). These point back to a common Germanic ancestor *aiks. There is no conclusive evidence of any related forms outside Germanic, however, although similarities have been noted with Greek aigílops, a term for a sort of oak tree, and Latin aesculus ‘oak sacred to Jupiter’.

Despite its passing similarity, acorn is not etymologically related. The oak was one of the commonest trees in the ancient European forests, and many terms that started out as names for it became generalized to simply ‘tree’: English tree, for instance, comes from an Indo-European ancestor that probably originally meant ‘oak’.
orchard: 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
rub: rub: [14] The antecedents of rub are unclear. It may have been borrowed from Low German rubben, but since it is not known where that came from, it does not get us much further. The derivative rubber [16] was originally used simply for ‘something for rubbing with’. But since the substance obtained from rubber trees was early on used for pencil erasers, it became known from the end of the 18th century as rubber (or in full India-rubber, from its place of origin). It is not clear whether rubber ‘set of games’ [16], which originated as a bowls term, is the same word.
=> rubber
sycamore: sycamore: [14] The sycamore is etymologically either the ‘fig-mulberry’ or the ‘mulberrymulberry’. The word came via Old French sicamor and Latin sycomorus from Greek sūkómoros. This was a compound based on móron ‘mulberry’, its first element being either Greek súkon ‘fig’ or an adaptation of Hebrew shiqmāh ‘mulberry’. It was originally used in English for a type of fig tree (the sycomores mentioned in the Bible – as in ‘The sycomores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars’, Isaiah 9:10 – are fig trees), and the modern application to a variety of maple did not emerge until the 16th century.
=> sycophant
tar: tar: [OE] Tar is etymologically a substance produced from ‘trees’. The word goes back via a prehistoric Germanic *terw- (source also of German and Dutch teer, Swedish tjära, and Danish tjære) to Indo-European *drew- ‘tree’ (source of English tree) – the original application of the word evidently having been to the tarry resins produced by conifers. (The tar [17] of Jack tar ‘sailor’ is short for tarpaulin [17], a compound noun probably formed from tar and pall ‘covering’.)
=> tree, trough
true: true: [OE] The underlying etymological meaning of true is ‘faithful, steadfast, firm’; ‘in accordance with the facts’ is a secondary development. It goes back to the prehistoric Germanic base *treww-, which also produced German treue and Dutch trouw ‘faithful’ and the English noun truce, and it has been speculated that it may ultimately have links with the Indo- European base *dru- ‘wood, tree’ (source of English tree), the semantic link being the firmness or steadfastness of oaks and suchlike trees. Truth [OE] comes from the same source, as do its derivative betroth [14], its now archaic variant troth [16], the equally dated trow [OE], and probably also trust and tryst.
=> betroth, troth, trow, truce, trust, truth, tryst
turpentine: turpentine: [14] Turpentine is nowadays used for an oil obtained from pine trees, but it originally denoted the ‘resin of the terebinth’, a small European tree of the sumach family. The name of the terebinth is probably of non-Indo- European origin. It was borrowed into Greek as térbinthos, which made its way into Latin as terbinthus. Its resin was called terbenthina rēsīna. The adjective terbenthina came to be used as a noun, and this passed into English via Old French terbentine.
wood: wood: [OE] The ancestral meaning of wood is probably ‘collection of trees, forest’; ‘tree’ (now obsolete) and ‘substance from which trees are made’ are secondary developments. The word goes back to prehistoric Germanic *widuz, which also produced Swedish and Danish ved ‘firewood’, and it has Celtic relatives in Gaelic fiodh ‘wood, woods’, Welsh gwydd ‘trees’, and Breton gwez ‘trees’.

Its ultimate source is not known for certain, although it has been suggested that it may go back to the Indo- European base *weidh- ‘separate’ (source also of English divide and widow). According to this theory, it would originally have denoted a ‘separated’ or ‘remote’ piece of territory, near the outer edge or borders of known land; and since such remote, uninhabited areas were usually wooded, it came to denote ‘forest’ (forest itself may mean etymologically ‘outside area’, and the Old Norse word for ‘forest’, mork, originally signified ‘border area’).
abatis (n.): "defense made of felled trees," 1766, from French abatis, literally "things thrown down," from Old French abateis, from abattre "to beat down, throw down" (see abate).
Alamo: nickname of Franciscan Mission San Antonio de Valeroin (begun 1718, dissolved 1793) in San Antonio, Texas; American Spanish, literally "poplar" (in New Spain, also "cottonwood"), from alno "the black poplar," from Latin alnus "alder" (see alder).

Perhaps so called in reference to trees growing nearby (compare Alamogordo, New Mexico, literally "big poplar," and Spanish alameda "a public walk with a row of trees on each side"); but the popular name seems to date from the period 1803-13, when the old mission was the base for a Spanish cavalry company from the Mexican town of Alamo de Parras in Nueva Vizcaya.
amarillo (n.): name given to several species of American trees, from Spanish, from Arabic anbari "yellow, amber-colored," from anbar "amber" (see amber). The city Amarillo in Texas, U.S., may be so called from the color of the banks of a nearby stream.
antelope (n.): early 15c., from Old French antelop, from Medieval Latin ant(h)alopus (11c.), from Greek antholops (attested in Eusebius of Antioch, c.336 C.E.), a fabulous animal haunting the banks of the Euphrates, very savage, hard to catch and having long saw-like horns capable of cutting down trees. Original sense and language unknown (it looks like Greek "flower-eye," as if from anthos + ops, but that may be a result of Greek folk etymology). A heraldic animal, also known in Medieval Latin as talopus and calopus, the name was applied c. 1600 to a living type of deer-like mammal. In the western U.S., it is used in reference to the pronghorn.
Arbor Day: the day set aside for the planting of trees, first celebrated 1872 in Nebraska, the brainchild of U.S. agriculturalist and journalist J. Sterling Morton (1832-1902). From Latin arbor "tree," which is of unknown origin.
arboreal (adj.): 1660s, from Latin arboreus "pertaining to trees," from arbor "tree," which is of unknown origin, + -al (1).
arboretum (n.): "tree-garden," 1838, from Latin arboretum, literally "a place grown with trees," from arbor "tree," which is of unknown origin, + -etum, suffix used to form the names of gardens and woods.
arcade (n.): 1731 (as arcado, from 1640s), from Italian arcata "arch of a bridge," from arco "arc," from Latin arcus (see arc). Applied to passages formed by a succession of arches, avenues of trees, and ultimately to any covered avenue, especially one lined with shops (1731) or amusements; hence arcade game (1977).
Ashley: fem. proper name, all but unknown before c. 1965; one of the most popular names for girls born in U.S. from c. 1980; evidently inspired by the surname Ashley, Ashleigh (attested from 12c.), which means "clearing among the ash trees," from Old English æsc + leah (see ash (n.2) + lea).
avenue (n.): c. 1600, "a way of approach" (originally a military word), from Middle French avenue "way of access," from Old French avenue "act of approaching, arrival," noun use of fem. of avenu, past participle of avenir "to come to, arrive," from Latin advenire "to come to," from ad- "to" (see ad-) + venire "to come" (see venue). Meaning shifted to "a way of approach to a country-house," usually bordered by trees, hence, "a broad, tree-lined roadway" (1650s), then to "wide, main street" (by 1846, especially in U.S.).
Barbados: probably from Portuguese las barbados "the bearded;" the island so called because vines or moss hung densely from the trees. An inhabitant was called a Barbadian (1732).
barren (adj.): c. 1200, from Old French baraigne, baraing "sterile, barren" (12c.), perhaps originally brahain, of obscure derivation, perhaps from a Germanic language. In England, originally used of women, of land in France. Of land in English from late 14c. As a noun, mid-13c., "a barren woman;" later of land.
BARRENS. Elevated lands, or plains upon which grow small trees, but never timber. [Bartlett, "Dictionary of Americanisms," 1848]
blade (n.): Old English blæd "a leaf," but also "a leaf-like part" (of spade, oar, etc.), from Proto-Germanic *bladaz (cognates: Old Frisian bled "leaf," German Blatt, Old Saxon, Danish, Dutch blad, Old Norse blað), from PIE *bhle-to-, suffixed form (past participle) of *bhel- (3) "to thrive, bloom," possibly identical with *bhel- (2) "to blow, swell" (see bole). Extended in Middle English to shoulders (c. 1300) and swords (early 14c.). The modern use in reference to grass may be a Middle English revival, by influence of Old French bled "corn, wheat" (11c., perhaps from Germanic). The cognate in German, Blatt, is the general word for "leaf;" Laub is used collectively as "foliage." Old Norse blað was used of herbs and plants, lauf in reference to trees. This might have been the original distinction in Old English, too. Of men from 1590s; in later use often a reference to 18c. gallants, but the original exact sense, and thus signification, is uncertain.
bloom (n.1): "blossom of a plant," c. 1200, a northern word, from a Scandinavian source akin to Old Norse blomi "flower, blossom," also collectively "flowers and foliage on trees;" from Proto-Germanic *blomon (cognates: Old Saxon blomo, Middle Dutch bloeme, Dutch bloem, Old High German bluomo, German Blume, Gothic bloma), from PIE *bhle- (cognates: Old Irish blath "blossom, flower," Latin flos "flower," florere "to blossom, flourish"), extended form of root *bhel- (3) "to thrive, bloom" (see folio). Related to Old English blowan "to flower" (see blow (v.2)).

Transferred sense, of persons, is from c. 1300; meaning "state of greatest loveliness" is from early 14c.; that of "blush on the cheeks" is from 1752. Old English had cognate bloma, but only in the figurative sense of "state of greatest beauty;" the main word in Old English for "flower" was blostm (see blossom).
bower (n.): Old English bur "room, hut, dwelling, chamber," from Proto-Germanic *buraz (cognates: Old Norse bur "chamber," Swedish bur "cage," Old High German bur "dwelling, chamber," German Bauer "birdcage"), from *bu- "to dwell," from PIE root *bheue- "to be, exist, dwell" (see be). Modern spelling developed after mid-14c. Sense of "leafy arbor" (place closed in by trees) is first attested 1520s. Hence, too, Australia's bower-bird (1847).
branch (v.): "send out shoots or new limbs," late 14c., also, of blood vessels, family trees, etc., "to be forked," from branch (n.). Meaning "to spread out from a center, radiate" is from c. 1400. Related: Branched; branching.
buckwheat (n.): 1540s, from Middle Dutch boecweite "beech wheat" (compare Danish boghvede, Swedish bovete, German Buchweizen), so called from resemblance between grains and seed of beech trees. Possibly a native formation on the same model as the Dutch word, from a dialectal form of beech. See beech + wheat.
campus (n.): "college grounds," 1774, from Latin campus "a field," probably properly "an expanse surrounded" (by woods, higher ground, etc.), from PIE *kampos "a corner, cove," from root *kamp- "to bend" (cognates: Lithuanian kampus "corner," Polish kępa "cluster of trees or brush"). First used in college sense at Princeton.
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.
chipmunk (n.): 1829 (also chitmunk, 1832), from Algonquian, probably Ojibwa ajidamoo (in the Ottawa dialect ajidamoonh) "red squirrel," literally "head first," or "one who descends trees headlong" (containing ajid- "upside down"), probably influenced by English chip and mink. Other early names for it included ground squirrel and striped squirrel.
clump (n.): 1580s, "lump; cluster of trees," from Middle English clompe "a lump" (c. 1300), from Dutch klomp "lump, mass," or Middle Low German klumpe "clog, wooden shoe." Old English had clympre "lump, mass of metal."
cola (n.): 1795, genus of trees native to west Africa and introduced in New World tropics, Latinized form of a West African name of the tree (compare Temne kola, Mandingo kolo). Meaning "carbonated soft drink" is 1920, short for Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola.
conservancy (n.): 1755, "commission with jurisdiction over a port or river," from Latin conservant-, present participle stem of conservare (see conserve) + -cy. Earlier was conservacy (mid-15c., Anglo-French conservacie). Meaning "official preservation of undeveloped land" dates from 1859 (first reference is to protection of bo trees in Ceylon).
coppice (n.): late 14c., "small thicket of trees grown for cutting," from Old French copeiz, coupeiz "a cut-over forest," from Vulgar Latin *colpaticium "having been cut," ultimately from Latin colaphus "a blow with the fist," from Greek kolaphos "blow, cuff" (see coup).
cycad (n.): 1845, Modern Latin, from Greek kykas, a word found in Theophrastus, but now thought to be a scribal error for koikas "palm trees," accusative plural of koix, a word from an unknown non-Greek language.