英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

abbot [abbot 词源字典]: abbot: [OE] Abbot comes ultimately from abbā, a Syriac word meaning ‘father’ (which itself achieved some currency in English, particularly in reminiscence of its biblical use: ‘And he said, Abba, father, all things are possible unto thee’, Mark 14:36). This came into Greek as abbás, and thence, via the Latin accusative abbatem, into Old English as abbud or abbod.

The French term abbé (which is much less specific in meaning than English abbot) comes from the same source. In much the same way as father is used in modern English for priests, abba was widely current in the East for referring to monks, and hence its eventual application to the head of a monastery. A derivative of Latin abbatem was abbatia, which has given English both abbacy [15] and (via Old French abbeie) abbey [13]. Abbess is of similar antiquity (Latin had abbatissa).
=> abbess, abbey[abbot etymology, abbot 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
carbuncle: carbuncle: [13] Etymologically, a carbuncle is a ‘small piece of coal’. It comes ultimately from Latin carbunculus, a diminutive form of carbō ‘coal’ (source of English carbon). This reached English via Old French carbuncle. The Latin word had two main metaphorical meanings, based on the idea of a glowing coal: ‘red gem’ and ‘red inflamed spot’, both of which passed into English.

The latter achieved some notoriety in British English in the 1980s following a remark by the Prince of Wales in 1984 comparing a piece of modern architecture unfavourably to a ‘carbuncle’, although ironically from the 15th to the 17th centuries the word was used for ‘something of great splendour’.
=> carbon
climax: climax: [16] Etymologically, a climax is a series of steps by which a goal is achieved, but in the late 18th century English, anticipating the culmination, started using it for the goal itself. It comes, via late Latin, from Greek klimax ‘ladder’, which was ultimately from the same source (the Indo-European base *kli-) as produced English lean. This came to be used metaphorically as a rhetorical term for a figure of speech in which a series of statements is arranged in order of increasing forcefulness, and hence for any escalating progression: ‘the top of the climax of their wickedness’, Edmund Burke 1793.

Whence modern English ‘high point’.
=> ladder, lean
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
fort: fort: [15] Etymologically, a fort is a ‘strong place’. The word comes either from Old French fort or from Italian forte, both noun uses of an adjective descended from Latin fortis ‘strong’. A similar semantic result, but achieved by derivation rather than conversion, can be seen in fortress [13], a borrowing from Old French forteresse, which goes back to Vulgar Latin *fortaritia, a derivative of Latin fortis. (The nearest native English equivalent of both words is stronghold.) Other words inherited by English from fortis include fortify [15], fortitude [15], the noun forte ‘strong point’ [17] (it was borrowed, despite its modern Italianate pronunciation, from French fort, and was subsequently remodelled on the French feminine form forte), and the musical direction forte ‘loud’ [18] (from Italian), which appears also in pianoforte.
=> force, fortify, fortress
image: image: [13] Latin imāgō meant a ‘likeness of something’ (it probably came from the same source as imitate). It subsequently developed a range of secondary senses, such as ‘echo’ and ‘ghost’, which have not survived the journey via Old French into English, but the central ‘likeness’ remains in place. Derived from the noun in Latin was the verb imāginārī ‘form an image of in one’s mind, picture to oneself’, which became English imagine [14]. (Latin imāgō, incidentally, was used in the 1760s by the Swedish naturalist Linnaeus for an ‘adult insect’ – based on the Latin sense ‘natural shape’, the idea being that the insect had achieved its final perfect form after various pupal forms – and English took the term over at the end of the 18th century.)
=> imitate
lig: lig: [20] The verb lig, meaning ‘freeload, sponge’, and its derivative ligger, achieved a particular prominence in late 20th-century British English. But in fact its roots go back far into the past. In origin it is simply a variant version of the verb lie ‘recline’. In Old English times this was licgan, and although in the mainstream language licgan became lie, liggen survived dialectally. The sense ‘lie about’ passed naturally into ‘lounge about lazily’, and apparently merged with another dialectal sense ‘steal’ to produce the word’s current meaning.
=> lie
achieve (v.): early 14c., from Old French achever (12c.) "to finish, accomplish, complete," from phrase à chef (venir) "at an end, finished," or Vulgar Latin *accapare, from Late Latin ad caput (venire); both the French and Late Latin phrases meaning literally "to come to a head," from stem of Latin caput "head" (see capitulum).
The Lat. caput, towards the end of the Empire, and in Merov[ingian] times, took the sense of an end, whence the phrase ad caput venire, in the sense of to come to an end .... Venire ad caput naturally produced the Fr. phrase venir à chef = venir à bout. ... From this chief, O.Fr. form of chef (q.v.) in sense of term, end, comes the Fr. compd. achever = venir à chef, to end, finish. [Auguste Brachet, "An Etymological Dictionary of the French Language," transl. G.W. Kitchin, Oxford, 1878]
Related: Achieved; achieving.
achievement (n.): late 15c., "act of completing" (something), from Middle French achèvement "a finishing," noun of action from Old French achever (see achieve). Meaning "thing achieved" is recorded from 1590s.
blarney (n.): 1796, from Blarney Stone (which is said to make a persuasive flatterer of any who kiss it), in a castle near Cork, Ireland. As Bartlett explains it, the reason is the difficulty of the feat of kissing the stone where it sits high up in the battlement: "to have ascended it, was proof of perseverence, courage, and agility, whereof many are supposed to claim the honor who never achieved the adventure." So to have kissed the Blarney Stone came to mean "to tell wonderful tales" ["Dictionary of Americanisms," 1848]. The word reached wide currency through Lady Blarney, the smooth-talking flatterer in Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield" (1766). As a verb from 1803.
climax (n.): 1580s, in the rhetorical sense (a chain of reasoning in graduating steps from weaker to stronger), from Late Latin climax (genitive climacis), from Greek klimax "propositions rising in effectiveness," literally "ladder," from root of klinein "to slope," from PIE root *klei- "to lean" (see lean (v.)).

The rhetorical meaning evolved in English through "series of steps by which a goal is achieved," to "escalating steps," to (1789) "high point of intensity or development," a usage credited by the OED to "popular ignorance." The meaning "sexual orgasm" is recorded by 1880 (also in terms such as climax of orgasm), said to have been promoted from c. 1900 by birth-control pioneer Marie Stopes (1880-1958) and others as a more accessible word than orgasm (n.).
leather (n.): Old English leðer (in compounds only) "hide, skin, leather," from Proto-Germanic *lethran (cognates: Old Norse leðr, Old Frisian lether, Old Saxon lethar, Middle Dutch, Dutch leder, Old High German ledar, German leder), from PIE *letro- "leather" (cognates: Old Irish lethar, Welsh lledr, Breton lezr). As an adjective from early 14c.; it acquired a secondary sense of "sado-masochistic" 1980s, having achieved that status in homosexual jargon in the 1970s.
Napoleon: used in reference to various qualities and things associated with 19c. French emperors of that name, especially Napoleon I (Bonaparte) (1769-1821), such as a gold coin issued by his government and worth 20 francs. As a 12-pound artillery piece, in use in U.S. military from 1857 (in this case, from Napoleon III (1808-1873), under whose rule it was designed). As a type of boot, by 1860; as a card game, by 1876; as a type of rich cake, from 1892; as a type of good brandy, from 1930. The name also was applied by 1821 to anyone thought to have achieved domination in any field by ambition and ruthlessness. Napoleon complex in reference to aggressiveness by short people is attested by 1930. Related: Napoleonic.
one-shot (adj.): 1907, "achieved in a single attempt" (original reference is to golf), from one + shot (n.). Meaning "happening or of use only once" is from 1937.
siddha (n.): in Indian religion, "one who has attained perfection and bliss," 1846, from Sanskrit siddhah "accomplished, achieved, successful, possessing supernatural power, sorcerer, saint," related to sidhyati "reaches his goal, succeeds," sadhuh "right, skilled, excellent, a holy man."