quword 趣词
Word Origins Dictionary
- engine
- engine: [13] The underlying etymological meaning of engine is ‘natural talent’. It comes ultimately from Latin ingenium (source also of English ingenious) which was formed from the base *gen- (as in genetic) denoting ‘reproduction’ and meant literally ‘skill or aptitude one was born with’. Abstract meanings related to this (such as ‘ingenuity’ and ‘genius’) have now died out in English (which acquired the word via Old French engin), but what remains is a more specific strand of meaning in the Latin word – ‘clever device, contrivance’.
Originally this was an abstract concept (often used in a bad sense ‘trick, cunning ruse’), but as early as about 1300 there is evidence of a more concrete application in English to a ‘mechanical device’. The word’s modern use for ‘machine producing motion’ originates in its early 19thcentury application to the steam engine. Engineer [14] comes via Old French engigneor from medieval Latin ingeniātōr, a derivative of the verb ingeniāre ‘contrive’, which in turn came from ingenium.
=> gin, ingenious - strata
- strata: [16] Latin strātum meant ‘something laid down’. It was a noun use of the neuter past participle of sternere ‘spread out, lay down, stretch out’, which also produced English consternation [17] and prostrate [14]. Its use for the abstract concept of a ‘layer’ (in English more usually in the plural strata) is a modern Latin development. Other English words from the same source include stratify [17], stratosphere [20] (the ‘layer’ of the atmosphere above the troposphere), stratus [19] (cloud in thin ‘layer’- like form), and street.
=> consternation, prostrate, straw, street - hall (n.)
- Old English heall "spacious roofed residence, house; temple; law-court," any large place covered by a roof, from Proto-Germanic *hallo "covered place, hall" (cognates: Old Saxon, Old High German halla, German halle, Dutch hal, Old Norse höll "hall;" Old English hell, Gothic halja "hell"), from PIE root *kel- (2) "to hide, cover, conceal" (see cell).
Sense of "passageway in a building" evolved 17c., from the time when the doors to private rooms opened onto the large public room of the house. Older sense preserved in town hall, music hall, etc., in use of the word in Britain and Southern U.S. for "manor house," also "main building of a college" (late 14c.). French halle, Italian alla are from Middle High German. Hall of fame attested by 1786 as an abstract concept; in sporting sense first attested 1901, in reference to Columbia College; the Baseball Hall of Fame opened in 1939. Related: Hall-of-famer. - nominalism (n.)
- 1820, "view that treats abstract concepts as names only, not realities," from French nominalisme (1752), from nominal, from Latin nominalis (see nominal). Related: Nominalist.