英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

ajar [ajar 词源字典]: ajar: [16] Ajar comes from Scotland and Northern England. In Middle English times it was a char or on char, literally ‘on turn’ (char comes from an Old English word cerr ‘turn’, which in its metaphorical sense ‘turn of work’ has given modern English charwoman and chore). A door or window that was in the act of turning was therefore neither completely shut nor completely open. The first spellings with j occur in the 18th century.
=> char, charwoman[ajar etymology, ajar origin, 英语词源]
alley: alley: [14] Alley is related to French aller ‘go’. Old French aler (which came from Latin ambulāre ‘walk’, source of English amble and ambulance) produced the derived noun alee ‘act of walking’, hence ‘place where one walks, passage’.
=> amble, ambulance
arson: arson: [17] Like ardour and ardent, arson comes from the Latin verb ardēre ‘burn’. Its past participle was arsus, from which was formed the noun arsiō ‘act of burning’. This passed via Old French into Anglo-Norman as arson, and in fact was in use in the Anglo-Norman legal language of England from the 13th century onwards (it occurs in the Statute of Westminster 1275). The jurist Sir Matthew Hale was the first to use the word in a vernacular text, in 1680. Other words in English ultimately related to it include arid and probably ash, area, and azalea.
=> ardour, area, ash, azalea
assize: assize: [13] Like assess, assize comes ultimately from Latin assidēre, which meant literally ‘sit beside someone’ (it was a compound verb formed from the prefix ad- ‘near’ and sedēre ‘sit’, related to English sit). In Old French this became asseeir (modern French has asseoir), of which the past participle was assis.

The feminine form of this, assise, came to be used as a noun ranging in meaning from the very general ‘act of sitting’ or ‘seat’ to the more specific legal senses ‘sitting in judgement’ and ‘session of a court’ (English session comes ultimately from Latin sedēre too). It was the legal usages which passed into English.
=> session, sit, size
attorney: attorney: [14] Attorney was formed in Old French from the prefix a- ‘to’ and the verb torner ‘turn’. This produced the verb atorner, literally ‘turn to’, hence ‘assign to’ or ‘appoint to’. Its past participle, atorne, was used as a noun with much the same signification as appointee – ‘someone appointed’ – and hence ‘someone appointed to act as someone else’s agent’, and ultimately ‘legal agent’.

Borrowed into English, over the centuries the term came to mean ‘lawyer practising in the courts of Common Law’ (as contrasted with a solicitor, who practised in the Equity Courts); but it was officially abolished in that sense by the Judicature Act of 1873, and now survives only in American English, meaning ‘lawyer’, and in the title Attorney- General, the chief law officer of a government.
=> turn
débâcle: débâcle: [19] A débâcle is etymologically an ‘act of unbarring’, the notion behind it being that once a restraining bar is removed, a rush of disasters follows. It was borrowed at the start of the 19th century (originally in the technical geological sense of a ‘sudden violent surge of water in a river’) from French, where it was a derivative of débâcler, a verb formed from dé- ‘de-, un-’ and bâcler ‘bar’. This was acquired from Provençal baclar ‘bar a door’, which came from medieval Latin *bacculāre, a derivative of Latin bacculus ‘stick’ (responsible also for English bacillus and bacterium).
=> bacillus, bacterium
draught: draught: [12] Draught and draft are essentially the same word, but draft (more accurately representing its modern English pronunciation) has become established since the 18th century as the spelling for ‘preliminary drawing or plan’, ‘money order’, and (in American English) ‘conscription’. The word itself probably comes from an unrecorded Old Norse *drahtr, an abstract noun meaning ‘pulling’ derived from a prehistoric Germanic verb *dragan (source of English drag and draw).

Most of its modern English meanings are fairly transparently descended from the idea of ‘pulling’: ‘draught beer’, for example, is ‘drawn’ from a barrel. Of the less obvious ones, ‘current of air’ is air that is ‘drawn’ through an opening; the game draughts comes from an earlier, Middle English sense of draught, ‘act of drawing a piece across the board in chess and similar games’; while draft ‘provisional plan’ was originally ‘something drawn or sketched’.
=> draft, drag, draw
faith: faith: [12] Faith comes ultimately from the prehistoric Indo-European *bhidh-, *bhoidh- (source also of English federal). It produced Latin fidēs ‘faith’, which lies behind a wide range of English words, including confide, defy, diffident (which originally meant ‘distrustful’), fealty [14], fidelity [15], fiduciary [17], and perfidy [16].

Its descendants in the Romance languages include Italian fede, Portuguese fé (as in auto-da-fé, literally ‘act of faith’, acquired by English in the 18th century), and Old French feid. This was pronounced much as modern English faith is pronounced, and Middle English took it over as feth or feith. (A later Old French form fei, foreshadowing modern French foi, produced the now defunct English fay [13]).
=> confide, defy, diffident, federal, fidelity, fiduciary, perfidy
fight: fight: [OE] The deadly earnestness of fighting seems to have had its etymological origins in the rather petty act of pulling someone’s hair. Fight, together with German fechten and Dutch vechten, goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *fekhtan, which appears to come from the same ultimate source as Latin pectere ‘comb’ and Greek péko ‘comb’.

The missing links in the apparently far-fetched semantic chain between ‘fighting’ and ‘combing’ are provided by such words as Spanish pelear ‘fight, quarrel’, a derivative of pelo ‘hair’, which originally meant ‘pull hair’; German raufen ‘pull out, pluck’, which when used reflexively means ‘fight’; and English tussle, which originally meant ‘pull roughly’, and may be related to tousle.
harvest: harvest: [OE] The idea underlying the word harvest is of ‘plucking, gathering, cropping’ – it comes ultimately from Indo-European *karp-, which also produced Greek karpós ‘fruit, crop, harvest’ (whence English carpel [19]) and Latin carpere ‘pluck’ (source of English carpet, excerpt, and scarce) – but its original meaning in English was ‘time of gathering crops’ rather than ‘act of gathering crops’.

Indeed, until as recently as the 18th century it was used as the name for the season now known as autumn (as its German relative herbst still is), and it was not until the 16th century that the present-day senses ‘act of gathering crops’ and ‘crops gathered’ began to develop.
=> carpet, excerpt, scarce
offend: offend: [14] Latin offendere meant ‘strike against’. It was a compound verb formed from the prefix ob- ‘against’ and -fendere ‘hit’ (source also of English defend). Its literal sense survived into English (‘The navy is a great defence and surety of this realm in time of war, as well to offend as defend’ proclaimed an act of parliament of Henry VIII’s time), and continues to do so in the derivatives offence [14] and offensive [16], but as far as the verb is concerned only the metaphorical ‘hurt the feelings’ and ‘violate’ remain.
=> defend, fend
purlieu: purlieu: [15] Purlieu has no etymological connection with French lieu ‘place’, which seems to have been grafted on to it in the 16th century in ignorance of its origins. It comes from Anglo-Norman puralee ‘act of walking round’, hence ‘area of land beyond a perimeter fixed by walking round’. This was a noun use of the past participle of Old French pouraler ‘go through, traverse’, a compound verb formed from the prefix pour- ‘round’ and aler ‘go’.
raffle: raffle: [14] Raffle was originally the name of a game played with three dice; the modern application to a ‘prize draw’ did not emerge until the 18th century. The word was borrowed from Old French raffle ‘act of snatching’, but where this came from is not known.
season: season: [13] A season is etymologically a time of ‘sowing seeds’. The word comes via Old French seson from Latin satiō ‘act of sowing’, a derivative of satus, the past participle of serere ‘sow, plant’ (which went back to the same Indo- European base that produced English seed, semen, and sow). In post-classical times ‘act of sowing’ evolved into ‘time for sowing’, and by the time it reached Old French it had developed further to any ‘suitable time’.

The application to ‘any of the four main divisions of the year’ emerged in English in the 14th century. The use of season as a verb, meaning ‘add flavourings to’, had its beginnings in post-classical Latin, and arose as the result of a progression from ‘sow’ through ‘ripen’ to ‘cook thoroughly or well’.
=> seed, semen, sow
seat: seat: [12] Seat is of course a close relative of sit – they come from the same prehistoric Germanic base, *set-. But unlike sit, it is not a longestablished native word. It is a borrowing, from Old Norse sáeti. It originally meant ‘act of sitting’, and was not used for ‘something to sit on’ until the 13th century.
=> sit
shot: shot: [OE] Shot goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *skutaz, which was derived from the same base that produced English shoot. It used to mean ‘payment’ as well as ‘act of shooting’, a sense shared by its Old Norse relative skot, which provided English with the scot of scotfree [16] (etymologically ‘without having to pay’).
=> scot-free, shoot
solecism: solecism: [16] Solecism ‘act of (grammatical) impropriety’ comes via Latin soloecismus from Greek soloikismós, a derivative of sóloikos ‘ungrammatical utterance’. This is said to have referred originally to the speech of Athenian colonists in Soloi, in ancient Cilicia, southern Turkey, held by snooty sophisticates back home in Athens to be a debased form of their own speech.
sporadic: sporadic: [17] Sporadic means etymologically ‘scattered like seed’. It comes via medieval Latin sporadicus from Greek sporadikós, a derivative of the adjective sporás ‘scattered’. This was formed from the same base as produced sporá ‘act of sowing, seed’, ancestor of English diaspora [19] (etymologically ‘dispersal’) and spore [19]. And both were related to speírein ‘sow’, source of English sperm.
=> diaspora, sperm, spore
sting: sting: [OE] Sting comes from a prehistoric Germanic base *stengg-, which also produced Swedish stinga and Danish stinge. This denoted ‘pierce with something sharp’ (‘He with a spear stung the proud Viking’, Battle of Maldon 993), a meaning which was not ousted in English by the more specialized application to insects until the late 15th century. Stingy [17] may be based on stinge ‘act of stinging’, a dialectal noun derived from Old English stingan ‘sting’; an underlying sense ‘having a sting, sharp’ is revealed in the dialectal sense ‘bad-tempered’.
stool: stool: [OE] Although stools are for sitting on, the word’s etymological meaning is ‘stand’. It comes from a prehistoric Germanic *stōlaz, which was formed from the base *stō-, *sta- ‘stand’ (source of English stand) using the noun suffix *-l- (in much the same way as saddle was formed from a base meaning ‘sit’). The notion of ‘standing’ no doubt passed into ‘sitting’ via an intermediate generalized ‘be positioned or situated’.

In the 15th century stool came to be applied specifically to a ‘commode’, and this led to its use in the following century for an ‘act of defecating’, and hence for a ‘piece of faeces’. Stoolpigeon [19] originated in American English as a term for a decoy pigeon tied to a stool.
=> stall, stand
strategy: strategy: [17] Etymologically, strategy denotes ‘leading an army’. It comes ultimately from Greek stratēgós ‘commander-in-chief, general’, a compound noun formed from stratós ‘army’ and ágein ‘lead’ (a relative of English act, agent, etc). From it was formed stratēgíā ‘generalship’, which reached English via French stratégie. Another derivative was stratēgeīn ‘be a general’, which in turn spawned stratégēma ‘act of a general’. This passed via Latin stratēgēma and French stratagème into English as stratagem [15].
surround: surround: [15] Although surround means ‘exist round’ something, it has no etymological connection with round. It comes via Old French suronder from late Latin superundāre ‘overflow’. This was a compound verb formed from the prefix super- ‘over’ and undāre ‘rise in waves’, a derivative of unda ‘wave’ (source of English undulate).

English took the word over in its original sense, and this survived into the 17th century (an Act of Parliament of 1609 noted that ‘the sea hath broken in … and hath decayed, surrounded, and drowned up much hard ground’). The modern sense ‘exist round, encircle’ arose in the early 17th century, presumably by association with round.
=> abundant, redundant, sound, undulate
toil: toil: English has two words toil, one of them now used only in the plural. Toil ‘work’ comes via Anglo-Norman toiler ‘stir, agitate, wrangle’ from Latin tudiculāre ‘stir around’. This was derived from tudicula ‘mill for crushing olives’, a diminutive form of tudes ‘hammer’, which went back to the prehistoric base *tud- ‘hit’, source also of Latin tundere ‘beat, crush’, which gave English abstruse, protrude, etc. Toils ‘entanglements’ represents a plural use of the now archaic toil ‘net’ [16].

This denoted etymologically ‘something woven’: it came via Old French toile from Latin tēla, a contraction of an earlier *texlā, which was derived from the base *tex- ‘weave’ (source of English text, textile, etc). Toilet [16] was borrowed from French toilette, a diminutive form of toile. It originally meant ‘cloth cover’, but it gradually evolved via ‘cloth cover for a dressing table’ to ‘the act of dressing and grooming oneself’.

The sense ‘lavatory’ emerged in mid 19th-century America, from the now obsolete ‘dressing room (with lavatory attached)’, inspired no doubt by the same delicacy that produced American English bathroom ‘lavatory’. Another member of the same word-family is tiller [15], which came via Anglo-Norman telier ‘weaver’s beam’ from medieval Latin tēlārium, a derivative of tēla.
=> abstruse, protrude; technical, text, textile, texture, tiller, tissue, toilet
-al (2): suffix forming nouns of action from verbs, mostly from Latin and French, meaning "act of ______ing" (such as survival, referral), Middle English -aille, from French feminine singular -aille, from Latin -alia, neuter plural of adjective suffix -alis, also used in English as a noun suffix. Nativized in English and used with Germanic verbs (as in bestowal, betrothal).
abstention (n.): 1520s, from Middle French abstention (Old French astencion), from Late Latin abstentionem (nominative abstentio) "the act of retaining," noun of action from past participle stem of Latin abstinere "keep back, keep off, hold off" (see abstain).
accession (n.): "act of coming to a position," especially of a throne, 1640s, from Latin accessionem (nominative accessio) "a going to, joining, increase," noun of action from past participle stem of accedere "approach, enter upon" (see accede).
acclaim (n.): "act of acclaiming," 1667 (in Milton), from acclaim (v.).
accommodation (n.): "room and provisions, lodging," c. 1600, now usually plural (accommodations) and chiefly U.S.; from French accommodation, from Latin accommodationem (nominative accommodatio), noun of action from past participle stem of accommodare (see accommodate). Meaning "appliance, anything which affords aid" is from 1610s; that of "act of accommodating" is from 1640s.
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.
acknowledgement (n.): 1590s, "act of acknowledging," from acknowledge + -ment. "An early instance of -ment added to an orig. Eng. vb." [OED]. Meaning "token of due recognition" is recorded from 1610s.
acquiescence (n.): 1630s, "act of acquiescing," from French acquiescence, noun of action from acquiescer (see acquiesce). Meaning "silent consent" is recorded from 1640s.
acquisition (n.): late 14c., "act of obtaining," from Old French acquisicion (13c.) or directly from Latin acquisitionem (nominative acquisitio), noun of action from past participle stem of acquirere "get in addition, accumulate," from ad- "extra" (see ad-) + quaerere "to seek to obtain" (see query (v.)). Meaning "thing obtained" is from late 15c. The vowel change of -ae- to -i- in Latin is due to a Latin phonetic rule involving unaccented syllables in compounds.
acrophobia (n.): "morbid fear of heights," 1887, medical Latin, from Greek akros "at the end, the top" (see acrid) + -phobia "fear." Coined by Italian physician Dr. Andrea Verga in a paper describing the condition, from which Verga himself suffered.
In this paper, read somewhat over a year ago at the congress of alienists at Pavia, the author makes confession of his own extreme dread of high places. Though fearless of the contagion of cholera, he has palpitations on mounting a step-ladder, finds it unpleasant to ride on the top of a coach or to look out of even a first-story window, and has never used an elevator. ["American Journal of Psychology," Nov. 1888, abstract of Verga's report]
act (n.): late 14c., "a thing done," from Old French acte "(official) document," and directly from Latin actus "a doing, a driving, impulse; a part in a play, act," and actum "a thing done," originally a legal term, both from agere "to do, set in motion, drive, urge, chase, stir up," from PIE root *ag- "to drive, draw out or forth, move" (cognates: Greek agein "to lead, guide, drive, carry off," agon "assembly, contest in the games," agogos "leader;" Sanskrit ajati "drives," ajirah "moving, active;" Old Norse aka "to drive;" Middle Irish ag "battle").

Theatrical ("part of a play," 1510s) and legislative (early 15c.) senses of the word also were in Latin. Meaning "display of exaggerated behavior" is from 1928. In the act "in the process" is from 1590s, perhaps originally from the 16c. sense of the act as "sexual intercourse." Act of God "uncontrollable natural force" recorded by 1726.
An act of God is an accident which arises from a cause which operates without interference or aid from man (1 Pars. on Cont. 635); the loss arising wherefrom cannot be guarded against by the ordinary exertions of human skill and prudence so as to prevent its effect. [William Wait, "General Principles of the Law," Albany, 1879]
administration (n.): mid-14c., "act of giving or dispensing;" late 14c., "management, act of administering," from Latin administrationem (nominative administratio) "aid, help, cooperation; direction, management," noun of action from past participle stem of administrare (see administer).

Early 15c. as "management of a deceased person's estate." Meaning "the government" is attested from 1731 in British usage. Meaning "a U.S. president's period in office" is first recorded 1796 in writings of George Washington.
admission (n.): early 15c., "acceptance, reception, approval," from Latin admissionem (nominative admissio) "a letting in," noun of action from past participle stem of admittere (see admit). Meaning "an acknowledging" is from 1530s. Sense of "a literal act of letting in" is from 1620s. As short for admission price, by 1792.
adornment (n.): late 14c., "act of adorning;" also "a thing which adorns;" from Old French aornement "ornament, decoration," from aorner (see adorn).
air force (n.): 1917, from air (n.1) + force (n.); first attested with creation of the Royal Air Force. There was no United States Air Force until after World War II. The Air Corps was an arm of the U.S. Army. In 1942, the War Department reorganized it and renamed it Army Air Forces. The National Security Act of 1947 created the Department of the Air Force, headed by a Secretary of the Air Force, and the U.S.A.F.
allurement (n.): 1540s, "means of alluring;" see allure + -ment. Meaning "act of alluring" is recorded from 1560s.
amortize (v.): late 14c., from Old French amortiss-, present participle stem of amortir "deaden," from Vulgar Latin *admortire "to extinguish," from ad- "to" (see ad-) + mortus "dead," from Latin mors "death" (see mortal (adj.)). Originally a legal term for an act of alienating lands. Meaning "extinguish a debt" (in form amortization) is attested from 1824. Related: Amortized; amortizing.
anchorage (n.): mid-14c., "toll or charge for anchoring" (see anchor (v.) + -age. Meaning "act of dropping anchor, being at anchor" is from 1610s; that of "place suitable for anchoring" is from 1706. The Alaska city of Anchorage was founded 1914.
annoyance (n.): late 14c., "act of annoying," from Old French enoiance "ill-humor, irritation," from anuiant, present participle of anuier "to be troublesome, annoy, harass" (see annoy). Meaning "state of being annoyed" is from c. 1500. Earlier, annoying was used in the sense of "act of offending" (c. 1300), and a noun annoy (c. 1200) in a sense "feeling of irritation, displeasure, distaste."
annulment (n.): late 15c., "act of reducing to nothing;" see annul + -ment. Meaning "act of declaring invalid" is recorded from 1864.
anther (n.): 1550s, "medical extract of flowers," from French anthère, from Modern Latin anthera "a medicine extracted from a flower," from Greek anthera, fem. of antheros "flowery, blooming," from anthos "flower," from PIE root *andh- "to bloom" (cognates: Sanskrit andhas "herb," Armenian and "field," Middle Irish ainder "young girl," Welsh anner "young cow"). Main modern sense attested by 1791.
appointment (n.): early 15c., "an agreement," also "a fixing of a date for official business," from Middle French apointement, from apointer (see appoint). Meaning "act of placing in office" is attested from 1650s.
appraisal (n.): "setting of a price," by 1784, American English, from appraise + -al (2). Figurative sense, "act of appraising" (originally a term of literary criticism) is from 1817.
approximation (n.): early 15c., "act of coming near or close," noun of action from approximate (v.). Meaning "result of approximating" is from 1650s.
army (n.): late 14c., "armed expedition," from Old French armée (14c.) "armed troop, armed expedition," from Medieval Latin armata "armed force," from Latin armata, fem. of armatus "armed, equipped, in arms," past participle of armare "to arm," literally "act of arming," related to arma "tools, arms" (see arm (n.2)). Originally used of expeditions on sea or land; the specific meaning "land force" first recorded 1786. Transferred meaning "host, multitude" is c. 1500.

The Old English words were here (still preserved in derivatives like harrier), from PIE *kor- "people, crowd;" and fierd, with an original sense of "expedition," from faran "travel." In spite of etymology, in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, here generally meant "invading Vikings" and fierd was used for the local militias raised to fight them.
ascendance (n.): 1742, from ascend + -ance. Properly "the act of ascending," but used from the start in English as a synonym of ascendancy.
assembly (n.): c. 1300, "a gathering of persons, a group gathered for some purpose," from Old French as(s)emblee "assembly, gathering; union, marriage," noun use of fem. past participle of assembler "to assemble" (see assemble). Meaning "gathering together" is recorded from early 15c.; that of "act of assembling parts or objects" is from 1914, as is assembly line. School sense is recorded from 1932.