quword 趣词
Word Origins Dictionary
- allow




- allow: [14] Allow comes ultimately from two completely different Latin verbs, allaudāre and allocāre, which became blended in Old French alouer. The first, allaudāre, was based on laudāre ‘praise’ (source of English laud, laudable, and laudatory); the second, allocāre (source of English allocate [17]) on locāre ‘place’.
The formal similarity of the Latin verbs gradually drew their meanings closer together. The notion of ‘placing’, and hence ‘allotting’ or ‘assigning’, developed via the now obsolete ‘place to somebody’s credit’ to ‘take into account, admit’. Meanwhile, the idea of ‘praising’ moved through ‘commending’ or ‘approving’ to ‘accepting as true or valid’, and ultimately to ‘permitting’.
=> allocate, laudable, location - sceptic




- sceptic: [16] The Greek verb sképtesthai meant ‘examine, consider’ (it was descended from a base *skep- which was related to *skop-, source of English scope, and may have been a reversed version of *spek-, from which English gets spectator, speculate, etc). From it was derived the adjective skeptikós, which was applied to various schools of philosophy (particularly that of Pyrrho of Elis) which stressed the need for careful examination of a proposition, starting from an attitude of doubt, before accepting it.
The word passed via Latin scepticus and French sceptique into English as sceptic, by which time it had acquired broader connotations of ‘initial doubt’.
=> scope - accept (v.)




- late 14c., "to take what is offered," from Old French accepter (14c.) or directly from Latin acceptare "take or receive willingly," frequentative of accipere "receive," from ad- "to" (see ad-) + capere "to take" (see capable). Related: Accepted; accepting.
- freemason (n.)




- late 14c., originally a traveling guild of masons with a secret code; in the early 17c. they began accepting honorary members and teaching them the secrets and lore, which was continued into or revived in the 17th century and by 1717 had developed into the secret fraternity of affiliated lodges known as Free and Accepted Masons (commonly abbreviated F. and A. M.). The accepted refers to persons admitted to the society but not belonging to the craft.
The exact origin of the free- is a subject of dispute. Some [such as Klein] see a corruption of French frère "brother," from frèremaçon "brother mason;" others say it was because the masons worked on "free-standing" stones; still others see them as "free" from the control of local guilds or lords [OED]. Related: freemasonic. - glasnost (n.)




- 1972 (in reference to a letter of 1969 by Solzhenitsyn), from Russian glasnost "openness to public scrutiny," literally "publicity, fact of being public," ultimately from Old Church Slavonic glasu "voice," from PIE *gal-so-, from root *gal- (2) "to call, shout" (see call (v.)). First used in a socio-political sense by Lenin; popularized in English after Mikhail Gorbachev used it prominently in a speech of March 11, 1985, accepting the post of general secretary of the CPSU.
The Soviets, it seems, have rediscovered the value of Lenin's dictum that "glasnost," the Russian word for openness or publicity, is a desirable form of conduct. [New York Times news service article, March 1981]
- gazump




- "Make a higher offer for a house than (someone whose offer has already been accepted by the seller) and thus succeed in acquiring the property", 1920s (in sense 2): from Yiddish gezumph 'overcharge'. sense 1 dates from the 1970s.
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These days we associate gazumping with the buying and selling of houses, a use that dates from the 1970s. It now means ‘to raise the price of a house after accepting an offer from a prospective buyer’, but in the early 20th century it simply meant ‘to swindle’, deriving from Yiddish gezumph ‘to overcharge’. In the late 1980s the opposite term gazunder (a combination of gazump and under) was coined to describe the practice of lowering the amount of an offer that the seller has already accepted while threatening to withdraw if the new offer is not accepted.