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allege [allege 词源字典]: allege: [14] Allege is related to law, legal, legislation, legation, and litigation. Its original source was Vulgar Latin *exlitigāre, which meant ‘clear of charges in a lawsuit’ (from ex- ‘out of’ and litigāre ‘litigate’). This developed successively into Old French esligier and Anglo- Norman alegier, from where it was borrowed into English; there, its original meaning was ‘make a declaration before a legal tribunal’.

Early traces of the notion of making an assertion without proof can be detected within 50 years of the word’s introduction into English, but it took a couple of centuries to develop fully. The hard g of allegation suggests that though it is ultimately related to allege, it comes from a slightly different source: Latin allēgātiō, from allēgāre ‘adduce’, a compound verb formed from ad- ‘to’ and lēgāre ‘charge’ (source of English legate and legation).
=> law, legal, legation, legislation, litigation[allege etymology, allege origin, 英语词源]
chock-full: chock-full: [14] There is more than one theory to account for this word. It occurs in a couple of isolated instances around 1400, as chokkefulle and chekeful, prompting speculation that the first element may be either chock ‘wooden block’, which came from an assumed Old Northern French *choque (thus ‘stuffed full with lumps of wood’) or cheek (thus ‘full up as far as the cheeks’). It resurfaces in the 17th century as choke-ful, which has given rise to the idea that it may originally have meant ‘so full as to choke’. The available evidence seems too scanty to come to a firm conclusion.
cool: cool: [OE] Cool comes from the same source as cold, namely Indo-European *gel-, *gol- (from which English also gets congeal, gel, and jelly). The Germanic descendants of this Indo- European base were *kal-, *kōl-. From these were derived the Germanic adjective *kōluz, which passed into Old English as cōl. Its use for ‘fashionable, hip’ is mid-20th-century, but its nonchalant application to large sums of money is of surprisingly long standing: ‘I just made a couple of bets with him, took up a cool hundred, and so went to the King’s Arms’, John Vanbrugh and Colly Cibber, The Provok’d Husband 1728.
=> cold, congeal, gel, jelly
cost: cost: [13] In Latin, something that cost a particular price literally ‘stood at or with’ that price. The Latin verb constāre was formed from the prefix com- ‘with’ and stāre ‘stand’ (a relative of English stand). In Vulgar Latin this became *costāre, which passed into English via Old French coster (the derived noun arrived first, the verb a couple of decades later). The adjective costly is a 14th century formation.
=> stand, statue
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
insulin: insulin: [20] Insulin, a hormone which promotes the utilization of blood sugar, was first isolated in 1921 by F G Banting and C H Best. Its name, which was inspired by the fact that insulin is secreted by groups of cells known as the islets of Langerhans (insula is Latin for ‘island’), was actually coined in French around 1909, and was independently proposed in English on a couple of further occasions before the substance itself was anything more than a hypothesis.
=> isle, peninsula
noose: noose: [15] The notion underlying the word noose is of a ‘knot’, rather than of a ‘loop of rope made with a knot’. The word comes from nos or nous, the Old French descendant of Latin nodus ‘knot’. This was the source of English node [16], of course, and of the diminutive form nodule [16], but it has also made a couple of less obvious contributions to English: dénouement [18], which comes via a French word denoting literally the ‘untying of a knot’, and newel [14] ‘staircase post’, which was borrowed from Old French nouel ‘knob’, a descendant of the medieval Latin diminutive nōdellus.
=> dénouement, newel, node, nodule
notch: notch: [16] Not much is known for certain about the word notch, apart from the fact that its immediate source, Anglo-Norman noche, existed at least a couple of centuries before English acquired it. There may well be some connection with Old French oche ‘groove, notch’ (probable source of the English darts term oche ‘line where the dart-thrower stands’); the initial n could well have arisen by misdivision of a preceding indefinite article (as happened with nickname).
=> oche
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
travesty: travesty: [17] Travesty and transvestite [20] are first cousins. Both are compounded of the Latin elements trāns- ‘across’ and vestīre ‘clothe’ (source of English vest, vestment, etc), but they are separate formations. Travesty comes ultimately from Italian travestire ‘change clothes so as to disguise’, formed from the Italian descendants of the Latin elements.

This was borrowed into French as travestir ‘ridicule’, and its past participle travesti gave English travesty. Transvestite is a new formation, coined in German in the first decade of the 20th century (although there are a couple of isolated instances of a verb transvest ‘cross-dress’ from the 1650s).
=> invest, transvestite, vest, vestment
brace (n.): early 14c., "piece of armor for the arms," also "thong, strap for fastening," from Old French brace, braz "arms," also "length measured by two arms" (12c., Modern French bras "arm, power;" brasse "fathom, armful, breaststroke"), from Latin bracchia, plural of bracchium "an arm, a forearm," from Greek brakhion "an arm" (see brachio-). Applied to various devices for fastening and tightening on notion of clasping arms. Of dogs, "a couple, a pair" from c. 1400.
cohabit (v.): euphemism since 1530s to describe a couple living together without benefit of marriage; back-formation from cohabitation. Related: Cohabited; cohabiting.
meiosis (n.): "division of a cell nucleus," 1905, from Greek meiosis "a lessening," from meioun "to lessen," from meion "less," from PIE root *mei- (2) "small" (see minus).

Earlier (1580s) it was a rhetorical term, a figure of speech "weak or negative expression used for a positive and forcible one, so that it may be made all the more emphatic," as when one says "not bad" meaning "very good" or "don't mind if I do" meaning "I really would like to," or this example from "Mark Twain":
"YOUNG AUTHOR." -- Yes Agassiz does recommend authors to eat fish, because the phosphorus in it makes brains. So far you are correct. But I cannot help you to a decision about the amount you need to eat,--at least, not with certainty. If the specimen composition you send is about your fair usual average, I should judge that perhaps a couple of whales would be all you would want for the present. Not the largest kind, but simply good, middling-sized whales.
Related: meiotic; meiotically.
shmoo (n.): (plural shmoon), comic strip creature, 1948; see schmuck. It was a U.S. fad for a couple of years after its debut.
sunny (adj.): "full of sun," early 14c., from sun (n.) + -y (2). Compare Dutch zonnig, German sonnig. Figurative sense of "cheerful" is attested from 1540s. Sunny side in reference to optimistic outlook is from 1831. Eggs served sunny side up first attested 1887, in lunch counter slang, in reference to appearance when served.
Young Man (in Park Row coffee-and-cake saloon)--Waiter, I want a beefsteak, unpeeled potatoes, and a couple of eggs fried on one side only!
Waiter (vociferously)--"Slaughter in the pan," "a Murphy with his coat on," an' "two white wings with the sunny side up!" ["Puck," April 27, 1887]
Related: Sunnily; sunniness. As a noun meaning "sunfish" from 1835.
tweedledum (n.): paired with tweedledee to signify two things or persons nearly alike, differing in name, 1725, coined by English poet John Byrom (1692-1767) in his satire "On the Feud Between Handel and Bononcini," a couple of competing musicians, from tweedle "to sing, to whistle" (1680s), of imitative origin. The -dum and -dee perhaps suggest low and high sounds respectively.
missionary position: "A position for sexual intercourse in which a couple lie face to face with the woman underneath the man", Said to be so named because early missionaries advocated the position as ‘proper’ to primitive peoples, to whom the practice was unknown.
distich: "A pair of verse lines; a couplet", Early 16th century: via Latin from Greek distikhon (metron) '(measure) of two lines', neuter of distikhos, from di- 'twice' + stikhos 'line'.