英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

aardvark: aardvark: see earth, farrow
arduous: arduous: [16] Latin arduus, the source of English arduous, originally meant ‘high, steep’ (it is related to Greek orthós ‘straight, upright, correct’, as in English orthodox); the sense ‘difficult, laborious’ was a later metaphorical development. (The word has no connection with ardour, which comes ultimately from Latin ardēre ‘burn’; see ARSON.)
=> orthodox
avant-garde: avant-garde: see vanguard
awkward: awkward: [14] When awkward was coined, in Scotland and northern England, it meant ‘turned in the wrong direction’. Middle English had an adjective awk, which meant ‘the wrong way round, backhanded’, and hence ‘perverse’, and with the addition of the suffix -ward this became awkward. Awk itself was adopted from Old Norse afugr, which is related to German ab ‘away’ and English off. Awkward followed a similar semantic path to awk, via ‘perverse, illadapted’ to ‘clumsy’.
=> off
bard: bard: [14] Bard is of Celtic origin. A prehistoric Old Celtic *bardos produced Scottish and Irish Gaelic bárd and Welsh bardd, which meant ‘poet-singer’. It appears to have been the Scottish form which introduced the word into English, in the sense ‘strolling minstrel’. The modern, more elevated meaning ‘poet’ is 17thcentury.
bastard: bastard: [13] The idea underlying the word bastard appears to be that of a child born of an impromptu sexual encounter on an improvised bed, for it seems to echo Old French fils de bast, literally ‘packsaddle son’, that is, one conceived on a packsaddle pillow. If this is the case, the word goes back to medieval Latin bastum ‘packsaddle’, whose ultimate source was Greek bastázein ‘carry’; this passed via Old French bast, later bat, into late Middle English as bat, which now survives only in batman [18].

The derived form is first found in medieval Latin as bastardus, and this reached English via Old French bastard. Its modern usage as a general term of abuse dates from the early 19th century.
=> batman
beard: beard: [OE] Old English beard came from West Germanic *bartha, which was also the source of German bart and Dutch baard. A close relative of this was Latin barba ‘beard’, which gave English barb [14] (via Old French barbe), barber [13] (ultimately from medieval Latin barbātor, originally a ‘beard-trimmer’), and barbel [14], a fish with sensitive whisker-like projections round its mouth (from late Latin barbellus, a diminutive form of barbus ‘barbel’, which was derived from barba).
=> barb, barber
billiards: billiards: [16] Billiard comes from French billard, which is the name not only of the game, but also of the cue it is played with. And the cue is the clue to the word’s history, for it comes from French bille ‘tree trunk’, hence ‘long cylindrical bit of wood’. The import of the -ard suffix is not altogether clear, but another suffix used with bille was the diminutive -ette, from which English got billet ‘piece of wood’ [15] (not to be confused with billet ‘assignment to lodgings’; see BILL). Bille itself came from medieval Latin billa or billus, which may have been of Celtic origin.
=> billet
board: board: [OE] Old English bord had a wide range of meanings, whose two main strands (‘plank’ and ‘border, side of a ship’) reveal that it came from two distinct sources: Germanic *bortham and *borthaz respectively (despite their similarity, they have not been shown to be the same word). Related forms in other Germanic languages that point up the dichotomy are Dutch bord ‘shelf’ and boord ‘border, side of a ship’.

The second, ‘edge’ element of board (which is probably related to border) now survives in English only in seaboard (literally the ‘edge of the sea’) and in variations on the phrase on board ship (whose original reference to the ship’s sides is nowadays perceived as relating to the deck). Board ‘food’ (as in ‘board and lodging’), and hence boarder, are metaphorical applications of board ‘table’.
=> border
boulevard: boulevard: [18] Boulevard is a frenchified version of German bollwerk ‘fortification’ (the corresponding anglicized version is bulwark). The meaning of the French word, apparently quite divergent from that of bulwark, comes originally from the practice of constructing walkways along the top of demolished ramparts.
=> bulwark
bustard: bustard: [15] Bustard (the name of a large game bird now extinct in Britain) is something of a mystery word. Old French had two terms for the bird, bistarde and oustarde, both of which come from Latin avis tarda, literally ‘slow bird’ (Latin tardus gave English tardy [15]). This, according to the Roman writer Pliny, was what the bird was called in Spain.

It has been objected that the bustard can run quite fast, and that the name avis tarda must be some sort of folk-etymological alteration of a non-Latin word; but in fact the bird’s normal gait is a fairly slow and stately walk, so the term is not so far-fetched. The English word is presumably a blend of the two Old French ones, perhaps via an Anglo-Norman *bustarde.
=> tardy
card: card: [16] English borrowed card from French carte, for some unknown reason changing t to d in the process. The French word (source also of English carton) came from Latin charta, which originally denoted ‘leaf of the papyrus plant’; and since papyrus leaves were used for making paper, the word in due course came to mean ‘paper’ (Latin charta also gave English chart and charter). The Latin word in turn came from Greek khártēs, which is probably of Egyptian origin.
=> carton, chart, charter, discard
cardiac: cardiac: see heart
cardigan: cardigan: [19] The cardigan was named after James Thomas Brudenell, 7th earl of Cardigan (1797–1868), an early sporter of button-through woollen jackets. His other, but less successful, claim to fame was that he led the Charge of the Light Brigade (1854) at Balaclava during the Crimean War.
cardinal: cardinal: [12] The ultimate source of cardinal is Latin cardō ‘hinge’, and its underlying idea is that something of particular, or ‘cardinal’, importance is like the hinge on which all else depends. English first acquired it as a noun, direct from ecclesiastical Latin cardinālis (originally an adjective derived from cardō), which in the early church denoted simply a clergyman attached to a church, as a door is attached by hinges; it only gradually rose in dignity to refer to princes of the Roman Catholic church. The adjective reached English in the 13th century, via Old French cardinal or Latin cardinālis.
coward: coward: [13] Etymologically, a coward seems to be ‘someone who runs away with his tail between his legs’. It comes from Old French cuard, which was based on *cōda, the Vulgar Latin descendant of Latin cauda ‘tail’. (The apparently similar cower [13] is no relation, coming from Middle Low German *kūren ‘lie in wait’.)
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.)
custard: custard: [15] A custard was originally a pie, which took its name from its ‘crust’ (Anglo- Norman *crustade, the source of the word, was a derivative of Old French crouste, from which English got crust). The earliest English form was crustade, and intermediate spellings crustarde and custade occur. The reference in the name is to the pie’s pastry shell, not to its lid, for it had none: it was an open pie, of meat or fruit, filled up with stock or milk. This liquid was often thickened with eggs, and by around 1600 the term had moved across to name a dish in its own right made of eggs beaten into milk and cooked.
=> crust
forward: forward: see forth
gabardine: gabardine: [16] The use of gabardine for a sort of worsted material is an early 20th-century development, but the word itself has been around much longer than that. Its central meaning (for which the usual spelling is gaberdine) is ‘long coarse outer garment’. English acquired it from Old French gauvardine, which was a development of an earlier gallevardine. This was probably derived from Middle High German wallevart ‘pilgrimage’ (a compound formed from wallen ‘roam’ and vart ‘journey, way’), and hence etymologically meant ‘pilgrim’s garment’.
garden: garden: [14] Ultimately, garden and yard are the same word. Both come from prehistoric Germanic *gardon, but whereas yard reached English via a direct Germanic route, garden diverted via the Romance languages. Vulgar Latin borrowed *gardon as *gardo ‘enclosure’, and formed from it the adjective *gardīnus ‘enclosed’. The phrase hortus gardīnus ‘enclosed garden’ came to be abbreviated to gardīnus, which gave Old Northern French gardin, the source of the English word (more southerly dialects of Old French had jardin, borrowed by Italian as giardino).
=> yard
gizzard: gizzard: [14] Latin gigeria denoted the ‘cooked entrails of poultry’, something of a delicacy in ancient Rome (the word may have been borrowed from Persian jigar). This produced a Vulgar Latin *gicerium, which passed into Old French as giser. English acquired it, but did not change it from giser to gizzard until the 16th century (the addition of a so-called ‘parasitic’ d or t to the end of a word also accounts for pilchard, varmint, and the now obsolete scholard for scholar, among others).
guard: guard: [15] Prehistoric West Germanic *warthōn produced English ward. It was borrowed into Vulgar Latin as *wardāre, and following the general phonetic trend by which Germanic initial w became g(u) in the Romance languages, it produced Italian guardare, Spanish guardar, and French garder. The noun derived from the latter, garde, gave English guard. Guardian [15], borrowed from Old French gardien, has a doublet in warden.
=> ward
haggard: haggard: [16] Haggard was originally a falconer’s term for a hawk as yet untamed. It has been suggested that its ultimate source was Germanic *khag-, which also produced English hedge, the implication being that a haggard was a hawk that sat in a hedge rather than on the falconer’s arm. The modern meaning ‘gaunt’ developed in the 17th century, probably by association with hag ‘ugly old woman’ [13] (perhaps a shortening of Old English hægtesse ‘witch’, a word of unknown origin related to German hexe ‘witch’).
=> hedge
hard: hard: [OE] Hard comes ultimately from a prehistoric Indo-European *krátus, which denoted ‘power, strength’. This original meaning was carried over into Greek krátos ‘strength, power, authority’ (source of the ending -cracy in such English words as democracy and plutocracy), but the Germanic languages took it over mainly in the sense ‘resistant to physical pressure’.

The prehistoric Germanic form *kharthuz produced, besides English hard, German hart, Dutch hard, Swedish hård, and Danish haard. The sense ‘difficult’, incidentally, developed in the 14th and 15th century from the notion ‘resistant to one’s efforts’. A Germanic derived verb *kharthjan ‘harden’ was borrowed into Old French as hardir ‘embolden’, and its past participle hardi ‘bold’ reached English as hardy [13].

Its main modern sense, ‘robust, tough’, presumably a harking back to its distant English relative hard, developed in the 16th century.
=> hardy
hazard: hazard: [13] The word hazard was introduced to English as the name for a game played with dice. It was borrowed from Old French hasard, which came via Spanish azar from Arabic azzahr, earlier al-zahr ‘luck, chance’. Its associations were thus from the first with ‘uncertainty’, and its central modern sense ‘danger’ did not develop until the 16th century.
hoard: hoard: [OE] Etymologically, a hoard is ‘that which one hides’. The word comes from a prehistoric Germanic *khuzdam, which was derived from the same base as the verb hide. (Hoarding [19], incidentally, is not etymologically connected; it comes from an earlier hoard ‘fence’, which probably goes back via Old French hourd or hord to a prehistoric German form that also produced English hurdle [OE]. Nor is the identically pronounced horde [16] related: it goes back via Polish horda to Turkish ordū ‘camp’, source also of Urdu [18], etymologically the ‘language of the camp’.)
=> hide
jeopardy: jeopardy: [14] The semantic focus of jeopardy has changed subtly over the centuries. Originally it meant ‘even chance’, but gambling being the risky business it is, and human nature having a strong streak of pessimism, attention was soon focussed on the ‘chanciness’ rather than the ‘evenness’, and by the late 14th century jeopardy was being used in its modern sense ‘risk of loss or harm, danger’. The word originated in the Old French expression jeu parti, literally ‘divided play’, hence ‘even chance’. It was to begin with a term in chess and similar board games.
leotard: leotard: [19] The leotard commemorates the French trapeze artist Jules Léotard (1830–70), who wore such a garment when he was performing. He was one of the foremost circus acrobats of his day, and a pioneer of aerial stunts: he performed the first mid-air somersault, and invented the ‘flying trapeze’ (he became known as the ‘Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze’, from George Leybourne’s song (1860) of that name), but fate has decreed that his name should be passed down to posterity in the form of a one-piece exercise garment.
lizard: lizard: [14] Lizard goes back to Latin lacertus or lacerta, words of unknown origin. It reached English via Old French lesard. The Latin word was used for ‘muscle’ as well as ‘lizard’, perhaps because the ripple of a muscle beneath the skin reminded people of a lizard’s movement (an exactly parallel development links mouse and muscle). And in heavily disguised form, owing to a detour via Arabic, alligator is the same word.
=> alligator
mallard: mallard: [14] Etymologically, a mallard seems to be a ‘male bird’. It comes from Old French mallart, which was probably a development of an earlier *maslart, a derivative of masle ‘male’ (source of English male). It was originally used for the ‘male of the wild duck’, but now it denotes either sex of the species (Anas platyrhynchos).
=> male
mustard: mustard: [13] Mustard was originally made by mixing the crushed seeds of various plants of the cabbage family with the freshly pressed juice of grapes – the ‘must’. Hence its name, which comes from Old French moustarde, a word derived from a descendant of Latin mustum ‘new wine’ (source of English must ‘grape juice’).
=> must
orchard: orchard: [OE] Etymologically, an orchard is probably simply a ‘plant-yard’. It appears to have been coined in the prehistoric Germanic period from *worti-, the ancestor of the now archaic English noun wort ‘plant, vegetable, herb’ (which is distantly related to root), and *gardaz, *gardon, forerunner of English yard and garden. Originally, as its derivation suggests, it was quite a broad term, covering vegetable gardens as well as enclosures for fruit trees, but by the 15th century it had more or less become restricted to the latter.
=> garden, yard
pardon: pardon: see date, forgive
petard: petard: see feisty
regard: regard: [14] The notions of ‘looking at something, keeping it in sight’ and ‘guarding it’ are closely linked, and often coexist in single words. Watch is an example, and so was Old French garder, ancestor of English guard. Addition of the prefix re- ‘back’ produced regarder ‘look back at, keep one’s eyes on’, hence simply ‘look at’. The Anglo-Norman version of the word gave English reward.
=> guard, reward, ward
reward: reward: [14] Reward is ultimately the same word as regard, and indeed was originally used interchangeably with it. It came from rewarder, the Anglo-Norman version of Old French regarder, source of English regard. The modern meaning of reward, ‘recompense’, which goes back to the 14th century, presumably arose from the notion of ‘regarding’ someone with favour.
=> guard, regard
sardonic: sardonic: [17] The Greek word for ‘scornful, mocking’ was sardánios, but this came to be changed to sardónios, which literally meant ‘Sardinian’, through association with the Latin term herba Sardonia ‘Sardinian plant’, the name of a sort of plant which when eaten caused facial contortions that resembled a scornful grin. English acquired the word via Latin sardonius and French sardonique. The sardine [15] probably gets its name from Sardinia too.
=> sardine
scabbard: scabbard: [13] English acquired scabbard from Anglo-Norman escaubers. This appears to have been a compound formed from Old High German scār, which usually meant ‘scissors’ but was also used for ‘sword’ (it came from the same base that produced English shear), and the element -berc ‘protection’ (as in hauberk [13], which etymologically means ‘neck-protection’), which was derived from bergan ‘protect’ (a relative of English borough, borrow, bury, etc). So essentially, a scabbard is ‘sword-protection’.
=> borough, borrow, bury, share, shear, shirt, short, skirt
standard: standard: Standard ‘flag, banner’ [12] denotes etymologically something that is ‘extended’ or unfurled. The word comes from Anglo-Norman estaundart ‘flag displayed on a battlefield so that troops can rally to it’. This was a derivative of Old French estendre ‘extend’ (first cousin of English extend). The sense ‘criterion, norm’, which emerged in the 15th century, is probably a metaphorical application of the notion of the ‘royal standard’ or banner as being the point from which authoritative commands (as of standards of weight and measurement) are issued. Standard ‘upright object, such as a tree’ [13] is probably an alteration of stander.
=> extend; stand
starboard: starboard: [OE] Starboard is etymologically ‘steer-board’. The word originated as an Old English compound formed from stēor ‘paddle, rudder’ (a relative of the verb steer) and bord ‘board’. The early Germanic peoples propelled and steered their boats by means of a paddle on the right-hand side of the vessel – hence the use of starboard as the nautical equivalent of right.
=> steer
steward: steward: [OE] A steward is etymologically someone ‘in charge of a sty’. Its Old English ancestor stigweard was a compound formed from stig ‘hall, house’ (a relative, if not the direct ancestor, of English sty ‘dwelling for pigs’) and weard ‘guardian, keeper’ – hence ‘keeper of the hall’.
=> guard, sty, ward
tardy: tardy: see bustard
towards: towards: [OE] The suffix -ward or -wards, which underlies towards, forward, and a host of other English adverbs and adjectives, comes from a prehistoric Germanic *-warth. This in turn goes back to the Indo-European base *wert- ‘turn’ (source also of English convert, version, etc) – so etymologically, towards denotes ‘turning to’ something.
=> convert, version
vanguard: vanguard: [15] Vanguards have nothing to do with guarding vans. The word denotes etymologically an ‘advance guard’. It is short for the long defunct avantgard, which was borrowed from Old French avant-garde, a compound formed from avant ‘in front’ and garde ‘guard’. (Its modern French descendant was reborrowed into English as avant-garde [20].)
=> avant-garde, guard
ward: ward: [OE] Ward and guard are ultimately the same word. Both go back to a prehistoric West Germanic *wartho ‘watching over’. But whereas guard reached English via Old French, ward is a lineal descendant of the Germanic word. The noun originally meant ‘watching, guarding’; its application to an individual room of an institution where people are guarded or looked after (at first including prisons as well as hospitals) dates from the 16th century.

The verb ward (now mainly encountered in ward off) comes from the Germanic derivative *warthōjan. The early sense ‘guardianship, custody’ is preserved in such expressions as ward of court, and also in warden [13] (from the Old Northern French derivative wardein, corresponding to the central French form guardien ‘guardian’) and warder [14], from Anglo-Norman wardere.

The word’s ultimate source is the base *war- ‘watch, be on one’s guard, take care’ (source also of English aware, beware, warn, wary, etc).
=> aware, beware, guard, warn, wary
wardrobe: wardrobe: [14] A wardrobe was originally a room in which clothes were kept. It did not shrink to a cupboard until the 18th century. The word was borrowed from Old Northern French warderobe, a compound formed from warder ‘look after, keep’ (a relative of English ward) and robe ‘garment’.
=> robe, ward
wizard: wizard: [15] A wizard is etymologically a ‘wise’ man – indeed originally the word was used for ‘philosopher’ or ‘sage’, without any suggestion of magical practices. It was derived from wise. The distinction between philosophy and magic was sufficiently blurred in the Middle Ages for the sense ‘magician’ to emerge in the 16th century, and that is the one which has prevailed.
=> wise
yard: yard: Yard ‘enclosed area’ [OE] and yard ‘three feet’ [OE] are distinct words, both of ancient ancestry. The former probably goes back ultimately to Indo-European *ghorto-, which also produced Latin cohors ‘court’ (source of English cohort and court) and hortus ‘garden’ (source of English horticulture) and Russian gorod ‘town’ (as in Leningrad).

Its prehistoric Germanic descendant was *gard-, which, as well as providing English with yard, has produced garden, garth [14] (via Old Norse), and the second syllable of orchard. Yard ‘three feet’ originally meant ‘stick, rod’ (a sense preserved nautically, as in yardarm [16]). It goes back ultimately to prehistoric Germanic *gazdaz ‘pointed stick’ (source of the gad of gadfly [16], etymologically the fly with the ‘sting’).

From this was derived West Germanic *gazdjō, which evolved into German gerte ‘sapling, riding cane’, Dutch gard ‘twig, rod’, and English yard. The Anglo-Saxons used the term as a unit of measurement of land, equal to about five metres (what later became known as a rod, pole, or perch), but its modern use for ‘three feet’ did not emerge until the 14th century.
=> cohort, court, garden, garth, horticulture, orchard; gadfly
-ard: also -art, from Old French -ard, -art, from German -hard, -hart "hardy," forming the second element in many personal names, often used as an intensifier, but in Middle High German and Dutch used as a pejorative element in common nouns, and thus passing into Middle English in bastard, coward, blaffard ("one who stammers"), etc. It thus became a living element in English, as in buzzard, drunkard.