英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

abyss: abyss: [16] English borrowed abyss from late Latin abyssus, which in turn derived from Greek ábussos. This was an adjective meaning ‘bottomless’, from a- ‘not’ and bussós ‘bottom’, a dialectal variant of buthós (which is related to bathys ‘deep’, the source of English bathyscape). In Greek the adjective was used in the phrase ábussos limnē ‘bottomless lake’, but only the adjective was borrowed into Latin, bringing with it the meaning of the noun as well.

In medieval times, a variant form arose in Latin – abysmus. It incorporated the Greek suffix -ismós (English -ism). It is the source of French abîme, and was borrowed into English in the 13th century as abysm (whence the 19th-century derivative abysmal). It began to be ousted by abyss in the 16th century, however, and now has a distinctly archaic air.
atlas: atlas: [16] In Greek mythology, Atlas was a Titan who as a punishment for rebelling against the gods was forced to carry the heavens on his shoulders. Hence when the term was first used in English it was applied to a ‘supporter’: ‘I dare commend him to all that know him, as the Atlas of Poetry’, Thomas Nashe on Robert Greene’s Menaphon 1589. In the 16th century it was common to include a picture of Atlas with his onerous burden as a frontispiece in books of maps, and from this arose the habit of referring to such books as atlases (the application is sometimes said to have arisen specifically from such a book produced in the late 16th century by the Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator (1512–94), published in England in 1636 under the title Atlas).

Atlas also gave his name to the Atlantic ocean. In ancient myth, the heavens were said to be supported on a high mountain in northwestern Africa, represented as, and now named after, the Titan Atlas. In its Greek adjectival form Atlantikós (later Latin Atlanticus) it was applied to the seas immediately to the west of Africa, and gradually to the rest of the ocean as it came within the boundaries of the known world.
=> atlantic
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
castle: castle: [11] Castle was one of the first words borrowed by the English from their Norman conquerors: it is mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle only nine years after the battle of Hastings. It comes via Anglo-Norman castel from Latin castellum, a diminutive form of castrum ‘fort’ (which was acquired by Old English as ceaster, and now appears in English place-names as -caster or -chester). The Old French version of castel, chastel, produced modern French château, and also its derivative châtelaine, borrowed into English in the 19th century.
=> château
champion: champion: [13] Etymologically, a champion is someone who fought in the campus or arena. Latin campus (source of English camp) meant, among other things, ‘field of battle’ – both a fullscale military battlefield and an area for staged battles between gladiators. Those who fought in such battles – the gladiators – were called in medieval Latin campiones.

The word passed into English via Old French champion. The word’s original meaning survives historically in such phrases as ‘king’s champion’, someone who will fight on behalf of the king, and by extension in ‘supporter’, as in ‘a champion of prisoners’ rights’. The modern sense ‘winner’ did not develop until the early 19th century. The abbreviated form champ is 19th-century American.

An alternative and now obsolete form of the word is campion, from Old Northern French, and it has been speculated that this is the origin of the plant-name campion [16], on the basis that it was used to make garlands for fighters.
=> camp, campion, champagne, champion
coleslaw: coleslaw: [18] Cole is an ancient and now little used English word for plants of the cabbage family, such as cabbage or rape (it comes ultimately from Latin caulis ‘cabbage’, whose underlying meaning was ‘hollow stem’ – see CAULIFLOWER). It was used in the partial translation of Dutch koolsla when that word was borrowed into English in the late 18th century. Kool, Dutch for ‘cabbage’, became cole, but sla presented more of a problem (it represents a phonetically reduced form of salade ‘salad’), and it was rendered variously as -slaugh (now defunct) and -slaw. (Interestingly enough, the earliest record of the word we have, from America in the 1790s – it was presumably borrowed from Dutch settlers – is in the form cold slaw, indicating that even then in some quarters English cole was not a sufficiently familiar word to be used for Dutch kool. Coldslaw is still heard, nowadays as a folketymological alteration of coleslaw.)
=> cauliflower, cole, salad
cupboard: cupboard: [14] A cupboard was originally exactly that: a ‘board’, or table, on which cups (and other pieces of crockery or plate) were placed for display. Essentially, it was what we would now call a sideboard. The modern sense, ‘recess with doors and shelves’, did not develop until the 16th century. (An earlier, and now largely superseded, term for ‘cupboard’ was press [14]. Cabinet is roughly contemporary with cupboard in its modern sense, and closet developed this meaning in the 17th century.)
defile: defile: Defile ‘make dirty’ [14] and defile ‘narrow pass’ [17] are distinct words in English. The former has a rather complex history. It was originally acquired in the 13th century as defoul, borrowed from Old French defouler ‘trample down, injure’; this was a compound verb formed from the prefix de- ‘down’ and fouler ‘tread’, which in turn goes back via Vulgar Latin *fullāre to Latin fullō ‘person who cleans and thickens cloth by stamping on it’, source of English fuller [OE].

In the 14th century defoul started to turn into defile under the influence of the synonymous (and now obsolete) befile [OE], a compound verb derived ultimately from the adjective foul. Defile ‘narrow pass’ was borrowed from French défilé, originally the past participle of défiler, a compound verb based on filer ‘march in a column’ (which is a close relative of English file).
=> fuller; file
handle: handle: [OE] Etymologically, a handle is nothing more or less than ‘something to be held in the hand’. Likewise the verb handle, together with Germanic relatives like German handeln and Swedish handla, began life as ‘hold, touch, feel with the hands’ (the German and Swedish verbs have since lost this original literal meaning, and now have only the metaphorical senses ‘deal with’, ‘trade’, etc).
=> hand
job: job: [16] The origins of job are uncertain. Its likeliest source is an earlier and now obsolete noun job which meant ‘piece’. It is quite plausible that job of work, literally ‘piece of work’, could have become shortened to job. But where this earlier job came from is not known, so the mystery remains open.
quaver: quaver: [15] Quaver was derived from an earlier and now obsolete Middle English quave ‘tremble’. This was of Germanic origin (Low German has the related quabbeln ‘tremble’), and probably started life as a vocal realization of the action of trembling. The use of the noun quaver for a short musical note (first recorded in the 16th century) comes from the original singing of such notes with a trill.
quibble: quibble: [17] Quibble probably originated as a rather ponderous learned joke-word. It is derived from an earlier and now obsolete quib ‘pun’, which appears to have been based on quibus, the dative and ablative plural of Latin quī ‘who, what’. The notion is that since quibus made frequent appearances in legal documents written in Latin, it became associated with pettifogging points of law.
rocket: rocket: English has two words rocket. The older, and now less familiar, is the name of a plant of the cabbage family whose leaves are used in salads. It was inspired by the plant’s downy stems, for it goes back ultimately to Latin ērūca, which originally meant ‘hairy caterpillar’. This may have been related to ērīcius ‘hedgehog’, from which English gets caprice and urchin.

It passed into Italian as ruca, whose diminutive form ruchetta developed a variant rochetta – whence French roquette and finally English rocket [16]. Rocket ‘projectile’ [17] is ultimately an allusion to the shape of such objects. It comes via Old French roquette from Italian rocchetto, a diminutive form of rocca ‘spool’ – hence the application to the ‘cylindrical’ rocket. Rocca itself represents a borrowing from a prehistoric Germanic *rukkon, which also lies behind English ratchet.
=> caprice, urchin; ratchet
slip: slip: There are three separate words slip in English. The verb [13] was probably borrowed from Middle Low German slippen, a product of the prehistoric Germanic base *slip-. This in turn went back to Indo-European *sleib- (source also of English lubricate [17]), a variant of the base which gave English slide. Slippery [16] was based on an earlier and now defunct slipper ‘slippery’, which also goes back to Germanic *slip-.

It may have been coined by the Bible translator Miles Coverdale, who used it in Psalm 34:6: ‘Let their way be dark and slippery’. It is thought that he modelled it on German schlipfferig ‘slippery’, used in the same passage by Martin Luther in his translation of the Bible. Slipper ‘soft shoe’ [15] was originally a shoe ‘slipped’ on to the foot; and someone who is slipshod [16] is etymologically wearing ‘loose shoes’. Slip ‘thinned clay’ [OE] is descended from Old English slypa ‘slime’, and may be related to slop [14].

One of its earlier meanings was ‘dung’, which is fossilized in the second element of cowslip. Slip ‘strip, piece’ [15], as in a ‘slip of paper’, was probably borrowed from Middle Low German or Middle Dutch slippe ‘cut, slit, strip’.
=> lubricate, slide; cowslip, slop
steal: steal: [OE] Steal comes from a prehistoric Germanic base *stel-. This also produced German stehlen, Dutch stelen, Swedish stjäla, and Danish stjæle, but its ultimate ancestry is unknown. The derived stealth [13] originally meant ‘theft’ (‘I know my lord hath spent of Timon’s wealth, and now ingratitude makes it worse than stealth’, Shakespeare, Timon of Athens 1607), but this has gradually been ousted by the metaphorical ‘furtiveness’. Stalk ‘follow furtively’ comes from the same Germanic base.
=> stalk, stealth
temperature: temperature: [16] Like its relatives temper and temperament, temperature originally meant ‘mixture’ (Philemon Holland in 1601 wrote of ‘a temperature of brass and iron together’). The modern sense ‘degree of heat’ emerged in the late 17th century, and seems to have evolved from another early and now obsolete sense, ‘mild weather’. This reflected the ‘restraint’ strand of meaning in the word’s ultimate source, Latin temperāre, which also survives in English temperance and temperate.
=> temper
tenuous: tenuous: [16] Tenuous comes from the same ultimate ancestor as thin. It is an alteration of an earlier and now defunct tenuious, which was adapted from Latin tenuis ‘thin’. And this went back to the Indo-European base *ten- ‘stretch’, a variant of which produced English thin.
=> tend, thin
tit: tit: English has three separate words tit. The oldest, ‘breast’ [OE], belongs to a West Germanic family of terms for ‘breast’ or ‘nipple’ that also includes German zitze and Dutch tit: it presumably originated in imitation of a baby’s sucking sounds. From Germanic it was borrowed into the Romance languages, giving Italian tetta, Spanish teta, Romanian tata, and French tette.

The Old French ancestor of this, tete, gave English teat [13], which gradually replaced tit as the ‘polite’ term. (Titillate [17] may be ultimately related). Tit the bird [18] is short for titmouse [14]. This in turn was formed from an earlier and now defunct tit, used in compounds denoting ‘small things’ and probably borrowed from a Scandinavian language, and Middle English mose ‘titmouse’, which came from a prehistoric Germanic *maisōn (source also of German meise and Dutch mees ‘tit’).

And the tit [16] of tit for tat (which produced British rhyming slang titfer ‘hat’ [20]) originally denoted a ‘light blow, tap’, and was presumably of onomatopoeic origin. (The tit- of titbit [17], incidentally, is probably a different word. It was originally tid- – as it still is in American English – and it may go back ultimately to Old English tiddre ‘frail’.)
=> teat, titillate; titmouse
auspices (n.): plural (and now the usual form) of auspice; 1530s, "observation of birds for the purpose of taking omens," from French auspice (14c.), from Latin auspicum "divination from the flight of birds; function of an auspex" (q.v.). Meaning "any indication of the future (especially favorable)" is from 1650s; earlier (1630s) in extended sense of "benevolent influence of greater power, influence exerted on behalf of someone or something," originally in expression under the auspices of.
boilerplate (n.): newspaper (and now information technology) slang for "unit of writing that can be used over and over without change," 1893, from a literal meaning (1840) "metal rolled in large, flat plates for use in making steam boilers." The connecting notion is probably of sturdiness or reusability. From 1890s to 1950s, publicity items were cast or stamped in metal ready for the printing press and distributed to newspapers as filler. The largest supplier was Western Newspaper Union.
chance (n.): c. 1300, "something that takes place, what happens, an occurrence" (good or bad, but more often bad), from Old French cheance "accident, chance, fortune, luck, situation, the falling of dice" (12c., Modern French chance), from Vulgar Latin *cadentia "that which falls out," a term used in dice, from neuter plural of Latin cadens, present participle of cadere "to fall" (see case (n.1)).

In English frequently in plural, chances. The word's notions of "opportunity" and "randomness" are as old as the record of it in English and now all but crowd out the word's original notion of "mere occurrence." Main chance "thing of most importance" is from 1570s, bearing the older sense. The mathematical (and hence odds-making) sense is attested from 1778. To stand a chance (or not) is from 1796.

To take (one's) chances "accept what happens" (early 14c.) is from the old, neutral sense; to take a chance/take chances is originally (by 1814) "participate in a raffle or lottery or game;" extended sense of "take a risk" is by 1826.
economic (adj.): 1590s, "pertaining to management of a household," perhaps shortened from economical, or else from French économique or directly from Latin oeconomicus "of domestic economy," from Greek oikonomikos "practiced in the management of a household or family" (also the name of a treatise by Xenophon on the duties of domestic life), hence, "frugal, thrifty," from oikonomia "household management" (see economy (n.)). Meaning "relating to the science of economics" is from 1835 and now is the main sense, economical retaining the older one of "characterized by thrift."
evening (n.): from Old English æfnung "the coming of evening, sunset, time around sunset," verbal noun from æfnian "become evening, grow toward evening," from æfen "evening" (see eve). As a synonym of even (n.) in the sense "time from sunset to bedtime," it dates from mid-15c. and now entirely replaces the older word in this sense. Another Old English noun for "evening" was cwildtid.
fade (v.): early 14c., "lose brightness, grow pale," from Old French fader "become weak, wilt, wither," from fade (adj.) "pale, weak; insipid, tasteless" (12c.), probably from Vulgar Latin *fatidus, which is said to be a blending of Latin fatuus "silly, tasteless" and vapidus "flat, flavorless." Related: Faded; fading. Of sounds, by 1819. Transitive sense from 1590s; in cinematography from 1918.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:--Do I wake or sleep?

[Keats, "Ode to a Nightingale"]
glass (n.): Old English glæs "glass; a glass vessel," from Proto-Germanic *glasam "glass" (cognates: Old Saxon glas, Middle Dutch and Dutch glas, German Glas, Old Norse gler "glass, looking glass," Danish glar), from PIE *ghel- (2) "to shine," with derivatives referring to bright materials and gold (cognates: Latin glaber "smooth, bald," Old Church Slavonic gladuku, Lithuanian glodus "smooth"). The PIE root also is the ancestor of widespread words for gray, blue, green, and yellow, such as Old English glær "amber," Latin glaesum "amber" (which might be from Germanic), Old Irish glass "green, blue, gray," Welsh glas "blue."

Restricted sense of "drinking glass" is from early 13c. and now excludes other glass vessels. Meaning "a glass mirror" is from 14c. Meaning "glass filled with running sand to measure time" is from 1550s; meaning "observing instrument" is from 1610s.
hallucinate (v.): "to have illusions," 1650s, from Latin alucinatus (later hallucinatus), past participle of alucinari "wander (in the mind), dream; talk unreasonably, ramble in thought," probably from Greek alyein, Attic halyein "wander in mind, be at a loss, be beside oneself (with grief, joy, perplexity), be distraught," also "wander about," which probably is related to alaomai "wander about" [Barnhart, Klein]. The Latin ending probably was influenced by vaticinari "to prophecy," also "to rave." Older in English in a rare and now obsolete transitive sense "deceive" (c. 1600); occasionally used 19c. in transitive sense "to cause hallucination." Related: Hallucinated; hallucinating.
have-not (n.): "poor person," 1742, from have + not. Have in the sense of "one who 'has,' one of the wealthier class of persons" is from the same source. Earliest in translation of "Don Quixote:
'There are but two families in the world, as my grandmother used to say; "the Have's and the Have-not's," and she stuck to the former; and now-a-days, master Don Quixote, people are more inclined to feel the pulse of Have than of Know.' ["Don Quixote de la Mancha," transl. Charles Jarvis, London, 1742]
here: Old English her "in this place, where one puts himself," from Proto-Germanic pronominal stem *hi- (from PIE *ki- "this;" see he) + adverbial suffix -r. Cognate with Old Saxon her, Old Norse, Gothic her, Swedish här, Middle Dutch, Dutch hier, Old High German hiar, German hier.

Phrase here today and gone tomorrow first recorded 1680s in writings of Aphra Behn. Here's to _____ as a toast is from 1590s, probably short for here's health to _____. In vulgar speech, this here as an adjective is attested from 1762. To be neither here nor there "of no consequence" attested from 1580s. Here we go again as a sort of verbal roll of the eyes is attested from 1950. Noun phrase here and now "this present life" is from 1829.
hic et nunc: Latin, literally "here and now," from demonstrative pronominal adjective of place hic "here" + nunc (see now).
homosexual (adj.): 1892, in C.G. Chaddock's translation of Krafft-Ebing's "Psychopathia Sexualis," from German homosexual, homosexuale (by 1880, in Gustav Jäger), from homo-, comb. form of Greek homos "same" (see homo- (1)) + Latin-based sexual.
"Homosexual" is a barbarously hybrid word, and I claim no responsibility for it. It is, however, convenient, and now widely used. "Homogenic" has been suggested as a substitute. [H. Havelock Ellis, "Studies in Psychology," 1897]
Sexual inversion (1883) was an earlier clinical term for it in English. The noun is recorded by 1895. In technical use, either male or female; but in non-technical use almost always male. Slang shortened form homo first attested 1929. See also uranian.
Kiribati: island nation in the Pacific, formerly Gilbert Islands and named for Capt. Thomas Gilbert, who arrived there 1788 after helping transport the first shipload of convicts to Australia. At independence in 1979 it took the current name, which represents the local pronunciation of Gilbert. Christmas Island, named for the date it was discovered by Europeans, is in the chain and now goes by Kiritimati, likewise a local pronunciation of the English name.
majolica (n.): Italian glazed pottery, 1550s, from Italian Majolica, 14c. name of island now known as Majorca in the Balearics, from Latin maior (see major (adj.)); so called because it is the largest of the three islands. The best pottery of this type was said to have been made there.
other (adj.): Old English oþer "the second" (adj.), also as a pronoun, "one of the two, other," from Proto-Germanic *antharaz (cognates: Old Saxon athar, Old Frisian other, Old Norse annarr, Middle Dutch and Dutch ander, Old High German andar, German ander, Gothic anþar "other").

These are from PIE *an-tero-, variant of *al-tero- "the other of two" (source of Lithuanian antras, Sanskrit antarah "other, foreign," Latin alter), from root *al- (1) "beyond" (see alias (adv.)) + adjectival comparative suffix *-tero-. The Old English, Old Saxon, and Old Frisian forms show "a normal loss of n before fricatives" [Barnhart]. Meaning "different" is mid-13c.

Sense of "second" was detached from this word in English (which uses second, from Latin) and German (zweiter, from zwei "two") to avoid ambiguity. In Scandinavian, however, the second floor is still the "other" floor (Swedish andra, Danish anden). Also compare Old English oþergeara "next year."

The other woman "a woman with whom a man begins a love affair while he is already committed" is from 1855. The other day originally (mid-12c.) was "the next day;" later (c. 1300) "yesterday;" and now, loosely, "a day or two ago" (early 15c.). Phrase other half in reference to either the poor or the rich, is recorded from c. 1600.
La moitié du monde ne sçayt comment l'aultre vit. [Rabelais, "Pantagruel," 1532]
provocate (v.): "to provoke, call forth," mid-15c., rare then and now obsolete, from Latin provocatus, past participle of provocare "to call out" (see provoke). Related: Provocated; provocating.
prurient (adj.): 1630s, "itching," later, and now exclusively, "having an itching desire" (1650s), especially "lascivious, lewd," (1746), from Latin prurientem (nominative pruriens), present participle of prurire "to itch; to long for, be wanton," perhaps related to pruna "glowing coals," from PIE root *preus- "to freeze; burn" (see freeze (v.)). Related: Pruriently.
quash (v.): "to make void, annul," early 14c., from Old French quasser, casser "to annul, declare void," and directly from Medieval Latin quassare, alteration of Late Latin cassare, from cassus "null, void, empty" (see caste (n.)).

Meaning "to break, crush," is early 14c., from Old French quasser, casser "to break, smash, injure, harm, weaken," from Latin quassare "to shatter," frequentative of quatere (past participle quassus) "to shake," from PIE root *kwet- "to shake" (cognates: Greek passein "to sprinkle," Lithuanian kuteti "to shake up," Old Saxon skuddian "to move violently," German schütteln "to shake," Old English scudan "to hasten").

The words have influenced each other in form and sense since Medieval Latin and now are somewhat grown together. Related: Quashed; quashing.
Rolex (n.): proprietary name of a make of watches, trademark reg. 1908 by German businessman Hans Wilsdorf, with Wilsdorf & Davis, London. Invented name. Company moved out of Britain 1912 for tax purposes and now is headquartered in Geneva.
skirl (v.): "to make a shrill sound," mid-15c., from a Scandinavian source (compare Norwegian skyrla, skrella "to shriek"), of imitative origin. In reference to bagpipes, it is attested by 1660s and now rarely used otherwise. As a noun 1510s from the verb.
stout (n.): 1670s, "strong beer or ale," from stout (adj.). Later especially, and now usually, "porter of extra strength" (by 1762).
Texas: Mexican province, briefly an independent nation and now a U.S. state, from Spanish Texas, Tejas, earlier pronounced "ta-shas," originally an ethnic name, from Caddo (eastern Texas Indian tribe) taysha "friends, allies," written by the Spanish as a plural. Related: Texan. Baseball Texas-leaguer "ball popped up just over the head of the infielders and falling too close for outfielders to catch" is recorded from 1905, named for the minor league that operated in Texas from 1902 (one theory is that outfielders played unusually deep in Texas because hit balls bounced hard off the hard, sun-baked ground).
thwaite (n.): "cleared land," 1620s, from Old Norse or Old Danish þveit "a clearing, meadow, paddock," literally "a cutting, cut-piece" (related to Old English þwitan "to cut, cut off;" see whittle). Always a rare word and now obsolete, but frequently encountered in place names, but "It is unclear whether the base meaning was 'something cut off, detached piece of land,' or 'something cut down, felled tree' ..." [Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names].
Tuileries: former palace in Paris, begun by Catherine de Medici, 1564; so called because it was built on the site of an ancient tile-works, from Old French tieule "tile," from Latin tegula (see tile (n.)). The former residence of the royal court, it was destroyed by fire in 1871 and now is the site of the Jardin des Tuileries.
tuxedo (n.): man's evening dress for semiformal occasions, 1889, named for Tuxedo Park, N.Y., a rural resort development for wealthy New Yorkers and site of a country club where it first was worn, supposedly in 1886. The name is an attractive subject for elaborate speculation, and connections with Algonquian words for "bear" or "wolf" were proposed. The authoritative Bright, however, says the tribe's name probably is originally a place name, perhaps Munsee Delaware (Algonquian) p'tuck-sepo "crooked river."
There was a hue and cry raised against the Tuxedo coat upon its first appearance because it was erroneously considered and widely written of as intended to displace the swallow tail. When the true import of the tailless dress coat came to be realized it was accepted promptly by swelldom, and now is widely recognized as one of the staple adjuncts of the jeunesse dorée. ["Clothier and Furnisher," August, 1889]
yet (adv.): Old English get, gieta "till now, thus far, earlier, at last, also," an Anglo-Frisian word (cognates: Old Frisian ieta, Middle High German ieuzo), of unknown origin; perhaps connected to PIE pronominal stem *i- (see yon). The meaning in other Germanic languages is expressed by descendants of Proto-Germanic *noh- (source of German noch), from PIE *nu-qe- "and now." As a conjunction from c. 1200.
pongee: "A soft, unbleached type of Chinese fabric, originally made from threads of raw silk and now also other fibres such as cotton which are usually mercerized", Early 18th century: from Chinese (Mandarin dialect) bĕnjī literally 'own loom' or běnzhī literally 'home-woven'.
Africanthropus: "Any of several extinct fossil hominids of the former genus or subgenus Africanthropus, known from Pleistocene fossil remains found in South and East Africa, and now regarded as various archaic forms of Homo sapiens", 1930s; earliest use found in Man: a monthly record of anthropological science. From scientific Latin Africanthropus, former genus name, originally coined as a subgenus of Homo from classical Latin Āfrica, the name of Africa + scientific Latin -anthropus.