英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

air [air 词源字典]: air: [13] Modern English air is a blend of three strands of meaning from, ultimately, two completely separate sources. In the sense of the gas we breathe it goes back via Old French air and Latin āēr to Greek áēr ‘air’ (whence the aero-compounds of English; see AEROPLANE). Related words in Greek were áērni ‘I blow’ and aúrā ‘breeze’ (from which English acquired aura in the 18th century), and cognates in other Indo-European languages include Latin ventus ‘wind’, English wind, and nirvana ‘extinction of existence’, which in Sanskrit meant literally ‘blown out’.

In the 16th century a completely new set of meanings of air arrived in English: ‘appearance’ or ‘demeanour’. The first known instance comes in Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV, IV, i: ‘The quality and air of our attempt brooks no division’ (1596). This air was borrowed from French, where it probably represents an earlier, Old French, aire ‘nature, quality’, whose original literal meaning ‘place of origin’ (reflected in another derivative, eyrie) takes it back to Latin ager ‘place, field’, source of English agriculture and related to acre. (The final syllable of English debonair [13] came from Old French aire, incidentally; the phrase de bon aire meant ‘of good disposition’.) The final strand in modern English air comes via the Italian descendant of Latin āēr, aria.

This had absorbed the ‘nature, quality’ meanings of Old French aire, and developed them further to ‘melody’ (perhaps on the model of German weise, which means both ‘way, manner’ and ‘tune’ – its English cognate wise, as in ‘in no wise’, meant ‘song’ from the 11th to the 13th centuries). It seems likely that English air in the sense ‘tune’ is a direct translation of the Italian.

Here again, Shakespeare got in with it first – in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I, i: ‘Your tongue’s sweet air more tunable than lark to shepherd’s ear’ (1590). (Aria itself became an English word in the 18th century.)
=> acre, aeroplane, agriculture, aria, aura, eyrie, malaria, wind[air etymology, air origin, 英语词源]
akimbo: akimbo: [15] Akimbo was borrowed from Old Norse. Its original English spelling (which occurs only once, in the Tale of Beryn 1400) was in kenebowe, which suggests a probable Old Norse precursor *i keng boginn (never actually discovered), meaning literally ‘bent in a curve’ (Old Norse bogi is related to English bow); hence the notion of the arms sticking out at the side, elbows bent. When the word next appears in English, in the early 17th century, it has become on kenbow or a kenbo, and by the 18th century akimbo has arrived.
=> bow
arrive: arrive: [13] When speakers of early Middle English ‘arrived’, what they were literally doing was coming to shore after a voyage. For arrive was originally a Vulgar Latin compound verb based on the Latin noun rīpa ‘shore, river bank’ (as in the English technical term riparian ‘of a river bank’; and river comes from the same source). From the phrase ad rīpam ‘to the shore’ came the verb *arripāre ‘come to land’, which passed into English via Old French ariver. It does not seem to have been until the early 14th century that the more general sense of ‘reaching a destination’ started to establish itself in English.
=> riparian, river
band: band: There are two distinct words band in English, but neither of them goes back as far as Old English. The one meaning ‘group of people’ [15] comes from Old French bande, but is probably Germanic in ultimate origin; the specific sense ‘group of musicians’ developed in the 17th century. Band ‘strip’ [13] comes from Germanic *bindan, source of English bind, but reached English in two quite separate phases.

It first came via Old Norse band, in the sense ‘something that ties or constrains’; this replaced Old English bend, also from Germanic *bindan (which now survives only as a heraldic term, as in bend sinister), but is now itself more or less obsolete, having been superseded by bond, a variant form. But then in the 15th century it arrived again, by a different route: Old French had bande ‘strip, stripe’, which can be traced back, perhaps via a Vulgar Latin *binda, to the same ultimate source, Germanic *bindan.
=> bend, bind, bond, bundle, ribbon
bank: bank: [12] The various disparate meanings of modern English bank all come ultimately from the same source, Germanic *bangk-, but they have taken different routes to reach us. Earliest to arrive was ‘ridge, mound, bordering slope’, which came via a hypothetical Old Norse *banki. Then came ‘bench’ [13] (now obsolete except in the sense ‘series of rows or tiers’ – as in a typewriter’s bank of keys); this arrived from Old French banc, which was originally borrowed from Germanic *bangk- (also the source of English bench).

Finally came ‘moneylender’s counter’ [15], whose source was either French banque or Italian banca – both in any case deriving ultimately once again from Germanic *bangk-. The current sense, ‘place where money is kept’, developed in the 17th century. The derived bankrupt [16] comes originally from Italian banca rotta, literally ‘broken counter’ (rotta is related to English bereave and rupture); in early times a broken counter or bench was symbolic of an insolvent moneylender.

The diminutive of Old French banc was banquet ‘little bench’ (perhaps modelled on Italian banchetto), from which English gets banquet [15]. It has undergone a complete reversal in meaning over the centuries; originally it signified a ‘small snack eaten while seated on a bench (rather than at table)’.
=> bench
bracket: bracket: [16] The word bracket appears to have come from medieval French braguette, which meant ‘codpiece’, a resemblance evidently having been perceived between the codpiece of a pair of men’s breeches and the ‘projecting architectural support’ which was the original meaning of bracket in English. Before the word even arrived in English, it had quite an eventful career.

The French word was a diminutive form of brague, which in the plural meant ‘breeches’. It was borrowed from Old Provençal braga, which got it from Latin brāca; Latin in turn acquired it from Gaulish brāca, but the Gaulish word seems ultimately to have been of Germanic origin, and to be related to English breeches.
=> breeches
budgerigar: budgerigar: [19] When the first English settlers arrived at Port Jackson (now Sydney Harbour) in the late 18th century, they heard the local Aborigines referring to a small green parrot-like bird as budgerigar. In the local language, this meant literally ‘good’ (budgeri) ‘cockatoo’ (gar). The English language had acquired a new word, but to begin with it was not too sure how to spell it; the first recorded attempt, in Leichhardt’s Overland Expedition 1847, was betshiregah. The abbreviated budgie is 1930s.
candle: candle: [OE] Candle is one of the earliest English borrowings from Latin. It probably arrived with Christianity at the end of the 6th century, and is first recorded in a gloss from around the year 700. Latin candēla was a derivative of the verb candēre ‘be white, glow’, also the source of English candid and related to incandescent and incense. Candelabrum [19] is a Latin derivative. The Christian feast of Candlemas [OE] (February 2) gets its name from the blessing of church candles on that day.
=> candelabrum, candid, incandescent, incense
cantaloupe: cantaloupe: [18] The cantaloupe melon was introduced into Europe from Armenia. The place where the newcomer was first cultivated is said to have been a former summer estate of the popes near Rome called Cantaluppi – whence the name. Both the name and the fruit had made their way to France by the 15th century, but neither seems to have arrived permanently in England until the early 18th century.
cappuccino: cappuccino: [20] Frothy coffee was given the name cappuccino in Italian from its supposed resemblance to the habit of Capuchin monks, which is the colour of lightly milked coffee. The Order of Friars Minor Capuchins, an independent branch of Franciscans, was founded in 1528. In emulation of St Francis they wear a pointed cowl, in Italian a cappuccio (from late Latin cappa ‘hood’, source of English cap and cape), from which the name Cappuccino ‘Capuchin’ (literally ‘little hood’) was derived.

The term Capuchin itself arrived in English in the late 16th century, and the order’s vestimentary arrangements have gifted other items of vocabulary to English, notably capuchin [18] for a woman’s cloak and hood and capuchin monkey [18] for a type of South American monkey with a tuft of hair on its head resembling a monk’s cowl.
=> cap, cape
ceremony: ceremony: [14] The antecedents of ceremony are obscure. We can trace it back to Latin caerimōnia ‘religious rites’, but there the trail stops. It probably arrived in English via Old French ceremonie.
chow mein: chow mein: [20] Most Chinese culinary vocabulary in English arrived after World War II, but chow mein is part of an earlier influx, which was brought by Chinese-speakers who found themselves on the west coast of the USA in the early years of the 20th century. In the Cantonese (Guangdong) dialect it means literally ‘fried noodles’ – a minimalist description of a dish which usually also contains chopped meat and vegetables.
collect: collect: [16] Collect comes via French collecter or medieval Latin collēctāre from collēct-, the past participial stem of Latin colligere ‘gather together’, a compound verb formed from com- ‘together’ and legere ‘gather’ (source also of English elect, neglect, and select and, from its secondary meaning ‘read’, lecture and legible).

The specialized noun use of collect, ‘short prayer’, pronounced with its main stress on the first syllable, antedates the verb in English, having arrived via Old French in the 13th century. It comes from late Latin collēcta ‘assembly’, a nominalization of the past participle of colligere, which was used in medieval times in the phrase ōrātiō ad collēctam ‘prayer to the congregation’. Collect comes from the past participle of Latin colligere, but its infinitive form is the source of English coil and cull.
=> coil, cull, elect, lecture, legible, ligneous, neglect, select
cost: cost: [13] In Latin, something that cost a particular price literally ‘stood at or with’ that price. The Latin verb constāre was formed from the prefix com- ‘with’ and stāre ‘stand’ (a relative of English stand). In Vulgar Latin this became *costāre, which passed into English via Old French coster (the derived noun arrived first, the verb a couple of decades later). The adjective costly is a 14th century formation.
=> stand, statue
croquet: croquet: [19] Old Norse krókr ‘hook’ (source of English crook) was borrowed into Old French as croc. This formed the basis of a diminutive, crochet, literally ‘little hook’, which has passed into English in various guises over the centuries. First to arrive was crotchet [14], applied to musical notes from their hooked shape. Crocket ‘curling ornamental device’ followed in the 17th century, via the Old Northern French variant croquet. Crochet itself, in the ‘knitting’ sense, arrived in the 19th century.

And in the mid 19th century croquet, apparently a dialectal variant of French crochet, was applied to the lawn game with balls and mallets newly introduced from Ireland to Britain. Old French croc was also the ancestor of encroach.
=> crook, crotchet, encroach, lacrosse
epicure: epicure: [16] The Greek philosopher Epicurus (Greek Epíkouros) (341–270 BC) evolved a code of life and behaviour which stressed the avoidance of pain, but since his time it has been stood on its head to signify the active seeking of pleasure – and particularly the pleasures of the table. Indeed, when the word epicure (which arrived via Latin epicūrus) was introduced into English it was even used for a ‘glutton’ – since toned down somewhat to ‘connoisseur of fine food and wine’.
erotic: erotic: [17] Érōs was the Greek word for ‘sexual love’ (as opposed to agápē ‘brotherly love’ and philía ‘friendship’). The concept was personified in Greek mythology as Érōs, the boy-god of love. Its adjectival derivative erōtikós arrived in English via French érotique.
grim: grim: [OE] Indo-European *ghrem-, *ghromprobably originated in imitation of the sound of rumbling (amongst its descendants was grumins ‘thunder’ in the extinct Baltic language Old Prussian). In Germanic it became *grem-, *gram-, *grum-, which not only produced the adjective *grimmaz (source of German grimm, Swedish grym, and English, Dutch, and Danish grim) and the English verb grumble [16], but was adopted into Spanish as grima ‘fright’, which eventually arrived in English as grimace [17].
=> grimace, grumble
jeans: jeans: [19] Jeans of the sort we would recognize today – close-fitting working trousers made of hard-wearing, typically blue cloth – emerged in America in the mid-19th century. But their antecedents have to be sought in a far distant place. The first known reference to trousers called jeans actually comes from mid-19thcentury England: ‘Septimus arrived flourishin’ his cambric, with his white jeans strapped under his chammy leather opera boots’, R S Surtees, Handley Cross 1843.

Why the name jeans? Because they were made of jean, a sort of tough twilled cotton cloth. This was short for jean fustian, a term first introduced into English in the mid-16th century, in which the jean represented a modification of Janne, the Old French name of the Italian city of Genoa. So jean fustian was ‘cotton fabric from Genoa’, so named because that was where it was first made.
magpie: magpie: [17] The original name of the magpie was simply pie, which came via Old French from Latin pīca. This is thought to go back ultimately to Indo-European *spi- or *pi-, denoting ‘pointedness’, in reference to its beak (the Latin masculine form, pīcus, was applied to a ‘woodpecker’). Pie arrived in English as long ago as the 13th century, but not until the 16th century do we begin to find pet-forms of the name Margaret applied to it (one of the earliest was maggot-pie).

By the 17th century magpie had become the institutionalized form. Some etymologists consider that the term for the edible pie comes from the bird’s name, based on a comparison of the miscellaneous contents of pies with the board of assorted stolen treasures supposedly accumulated by the magpie.
=> pie
minister: minister: [13] Etymologically, a minister is a person of ‘lower’ status, a ‘servant’. The word goes back via Old French ministre to Latin minister ‘servant, attendant’, which was derived from minus ‘less’. It retained this meaning when it arrived in English, and indeed it still survives in the verb minister. But already by the Middle Ages a specialized application to a ‘church functionary’ had developed, and in the 16th century this hardened into the present-day ‘clergyman’.

The political sense of the word developed in the 17th century, from the notion of a ‘servant’ of the crown. Derivatives from other languages to have established themselves in English include métier [18], which came via French from Vulgar Latin *misterium, an alteration of Latin ministerium ‘service’ (source of English ministry [14]), and minstrel.

And etymologically, minister is the antonym of master, whose Latin ancestor was based on magis ‘more’.
=> métier, minstrel, minus
mummy: mummy: English has two words mummy. The one meaning ‘mother’ [19], although not recorded in print until comparatively recently, is one of a range of colloquial ‘mother’-words, such as mama and mammy, that go back ultimately to the syllable ma, imitative of a suckling baby (see MAMMAL and MOTHER), and was probably common in dialect speech much earlier. The 19th century saw its adoption into the general language.

The abbreviation mum [19] has a parallel history. The Egyptian mummy [14] comes ultimately from Arabic mūmiyā ‘embalmed body’, a derivative of mūm ‘embalming wax’, but when it first arrived in English (via medieval Latin mumia and Old French mumie) it was used for a ‘medicinal ointment prepared from mummified bodies’ (‘Take myrrh, sarcocol [a gum-resin], and mummy … and lay it on the nucha [spinal cord]’, Lanfranc’s Science of Cirurgie, c. 1400).

The word’s original sense ‘embalmed body’ did not emerge in English until the early 17th century.
=> mama, mammy
necromancy: necromancy: [13] Greek nekrós meant ‘corpse’ (it has given English necrophilia [19], necropolis ‘cemetery’ [19], and necrosis ‘death of tissue’ [17] as well as necromancy, and goes back to a base *nek- ‘kill’ which also produced Latin nex ‘killing’, source of English internecine and pernicious, and possibly Greek néktar, source of English nectar).

Addition of manteíā ‘divination’, a derivative of mántis ‘prophet, diviner’ (from which English gets the insectname mantis [17], an allusion to its raised front legs, which give it an appearance of praying), produced nekromanteíā ‘foretelling the future by talking to the dead’, which passed into late Latin as necromantīa. By the Middle Ages the application of the term had broadened out to ‘black magic’ in general, and this led to an association of the first element of the word with Latin niger ‘black’.

Hence when it first arrived in English it was in the form nigromancy, and the restoration of the original necro- did not happen until the 16th century.
=> internecine, mantis, pernicious
olive: olive: [13] The word olive probably originated in a pre-Indo-European language of the Mediterranean area. Greek took it over as elaíā, and passed it on to English via Latin olīva and Old French olive. The olive’s chief economic role is as a source of oil (indeed the very word oil comes from a Greek derivative of elaíā), and before the word olive arrived in English, it was called eleberge, literally ‘oil-berry’.
=> oil
oppose: oppose: [14] Oppose is in origin an Old French re-formation of Latin oppōnere, based on poser (source of English pose). Oppōnere was a compound verb formed from the prefix ob- ‘against’ and pōnere ‘put’ (source also of English position, posture, etc). It originally meant literally ‘set against’, but developed various figurative senses, including ‘oppose in argument’, which is how it was originally used when it arrived in English.

The notions of ‘contention’ and ‘prevention’ have remained uppermost in the English verb, as they have in opponent [16], which comes from the present participle of the Latin verb. But opposite [14] (from the Latin past participle) retains another metaphorical strand that began in Latin, of ‘comparison’ or ‘contrast’.
=> pose, position, posture
pattern: pattern: [14] Etymologically, pattern and patron are the same word. When it arrived in Old French as patron (from Latin patrōnus), it had roughly the range of senses of modern English patron, including that of ‘one who commissions work’. But it had also acquired one other. Someone who pays for work to be done often gives an example of what he wants for the workman to copy: and so patrōnus had developed the meaning ‘example, exemplar’.

This passed into English from Old French along with the other meanings of patron, and not until the 17th century did it begin to be differentiated by the spelling pattern. The sense ‘decorative design’ emerged in the 16th century.
=> patron
penthouse: penthouse: [14] Penthouse has no etymological connection with house. It comes from Anglo- Norman *pentis, an abbreviated version of Old French apentis. This in turn went back to Latin appendicium ‘additional attached part’, a derivative of appendēre ‘attach’ (source of English append [15] and appendix [16]), which was a compound verb formed from the prefix ad- ‘to’ and pendēre ‘hang’ (source of English pending, pendulum, etc).

It arrived in English as pentis, and was used for a sort of ‘lean-to with a sloping roof’. A perceived semantic connection with houses led by the late 14th century to its reformulation as penthouse, but its application to a ‘(luxurious) flat on top of a tall block’ did not emerge until the 20th century.
=> append, pendulum
perfume: perfume: [16] The -fume of perfume is the same word as English fumes, but whereas fumes has gone downhill semantically, perfume has remained in the realms of pleasant odours. It comes from French parfum, a derivative of the verb parfumer. This was borrowed from early Italian parfumare, a compound formed from the prefix par- ‘through’ and fumare ‘smoke’, which denoted a ‘pervading by smoke’. When it first arrived in English, the semantic element ‘burning’ was still present, and perfume denoted the ‘fumes produced by burning a substance, such as incense’, but this gradually dropped out in favour of the more general ‘pleasant smell’.
=> fume
pigeon: pigeon: [14] Pigeon comes ultimately from late Latin pīpiō. This meant originally simply ‘young bird’, and was formed from the onomatopoeic base *pīp- (source also of English pipe), which imitated the chirps of young birds. It gradually specialized in use to ‘young pigeon, squab’, and both the general and the specific senses passed via Vulgar Latin *pībiō into Old French as pijon. By the time it arrived in English, however, only the ‘young pigeon’ sense survived, and this was soon overtaken by ‘pigeon’ in general.
=> pipe
pilgrim: pilgrim: [12] Etymologically, a pilgrim is someone who goes on a journey. The word comes via Provençal pelegrin from Latin peregrīnus ‘foreign’. This was a derivative of pereger ‘on a journey, abroad’, a compound formed from per ‘through’ and ager ‘country’ (source of English agriculture). When it arrived in English it was still being used for ‘traveller’ (a sense which survives in the related peregrinations [16]), but the specific ‘one who journeys for religious purposes’ was well established by the 13th century.

The peregrine falcon [14] got its name because falconers took its young for hunting while they were ‘journeying’ from their breeding places, rather than from their nests.
=> peregrine
pity: pity: [13] Latin pius ‘pious’, an adjective of unknown origin which gave English expiate and pious, had a noun derivative pietās. This has come into English in three distinct forms. First to arrive, more or less contemporaneously, were pity and piety [13], which were borrowed from respectively Old French pite and piete. These both developed from Latin pietās, and were originally synonymous, but they became differentiated in meaning before they arrived in English.

The Italian descendant of the Latin noun was pietà, which English took over in the 17th century as a term for a ‘statue of Mary holding the body of the crucified Christ’. Vulgar Latin *pietantia, a derivative of pietās, meant ‘charitable donation’. It has given English pittance [13].
=> expiate, piety, pious, pittance
pope: pope: [OE] Etymologically, the pope is the ‘daddy’ of the Roman Catholic church. Greek páppas was a nursery word for ‘father’, based no doubt on the first syllable of patér ‘father’ (a relative of English father). In the form pápas it came to be used by early Christians for ‘bishop’, and its Latin descendant pāpa was applied from the 5th century onwards to the bishop of Rome, the pope.

English acquired the word in the Anglo-Saxon period, and so it has undergone the normal medieval phonetic changes to become pope, but the derivatives papacy [14] and papal [14] arrived later, and retain their a. Latin pāpa also gave English papa [17], via French papa.
=> papa, papacy, poplin
preach: preach: [13] Preach goes back ultimately to Latin praedicāre ‘proclaim’ (source also of English predicament and predicate). Its Old French descendant was prechier, whence English preach (English had actually acquired the word before, directly from Latin in the Anglo-Saxon period, as predician ‘preach’, but this had died out before the Old French word arrived). The semantic shift in the Latin verb from ‘proclaiming’ to ‘preaching’ took place in the early Christian period.
=> predicament, predicate
press: press: English has two words press. The commoner, and older, ‘exert force, push’ [14], comes via Old French presser from Latin pressāre, a verb derived from the past participle of premere ‘press’ (source of English print). The corresponding noun press (which actually arrived in English a century earlier in the now archaic sense ‘crowd’) originated as a derivative of the Old French verb.

Derived verbs in English include compress [14], depress [14], express, impress [14], oppress [14], repress [14], and suppress [14]. The other press, ‘force’ [16], is now found virtually only in the expression ‘press into service’ and in the compound press-gang [17]. It originally denoted ‘compel to join the navy, army, etc’, and was an alteration, under the influence of press ‘exert force’, of prest ‘pay recruits’.

This was a verbal use of Middle English prest ‘money given to recruits’, which was borrowed from Old French prest ‘loan’. This in turn was a derivative of the verb prester ‘lend’, which went back to Latin praestāre ‘provide’, a compound formed from the prefix prae- ‘before’ and stāre ‘stand’. Related to praestāre was Latin praestō ‘at hand’, from which have evolved French prêt ‘ready’ and Italian and Spanish presto ‘quick’ (English borrowed the Italian version as presto [16]).
=> compress, depress, express, impress, oppress, print, repress, suppress; presto, station
punctuation: punctuation: [16] Punctuation is one of a small family of English words that go back to punctus, the past participle of Latin pungere ‘prick’ (source of English expunge [17], poignant [14], and pungent [16]). They include point, which arrived via Old French; punctilious [17] (which comes via Italian and may be related to pun) and punctual [14], both of them containing the etymological notion of ‘adherence to a precise point’; puncture [14]; punt ‘bet’; and punctuation itself, whose present-day meaning comes from the insertion of ‘points’ or dots into written texts to indicate pauses (also termed pointing from the 15th to the 19th centuries).
=> expunge, poignant, point, pungent, punt
purchase: purchase: [13] To purchase something is etymologically to ‘hunt it down’. It comes from Old French pourchacier ‘pursue’, hence ‘try to obtain’, a compound verb formed from the intensive prefix pour- and chacier ‘pursue’ (source of English chase). It arrived in English meaning ‘obtain’. This sense had virtually died out by the end of the 17th century, but not before it had evolved in the 14th century to ‘buy’.
=> chase
reverberate: reverberate: [16] Latin verbera meant ‘whips, rods’ (it was related to Greek rhábdos ‘stick’). From it was derived the verb verberāre ‘whip, beat’, which with the addition of the prefix re- ‘back’ produced reverberāre ‘beat back’. When this first arrived in English it was used literally (Thomas Coryat, for instance, in his Crudities 1611, wrote of ‘a strong wall to repulse and reverberate the furious waves of the sea’), but it was not long before the metaphorical application to the re-echoing of sounds took over.
scent: scent: [14] Scent comes ultimately from the same source that gave English sensation, sense, sentient, and sentiment – namely, Latin sentīre ‘feel, perceive’. It arrived via Old French sentir, and at first was sent in English (‘Fishes lurking among the stones [the dogs] seek out with their sent’, James Dalrymple, Leslie’s history of Scotland 1596). The modern sc- spelling did not begin to emerge until the 17th century. It is not known what the reason for it was, although it may have been a resolution of a possible confusion with the past form of send.
=> sensation, sense, sentient, sentiment
slight: slight: [13] The ancestral sense of slight is ‘level, even’. It goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *slekhtaz, a word of unknown origin which had that meaning, but whose descendants have diversified semantically beyond all recognition (German schlecht and Dutch slecht, for instance, now mean ‘bad’, having arrived there by way of ‘level, smooth’ and ‘simple, ordinary’). ‘Smooth’ was the original meaning of English slight (Miles Coverdale, in his 1535 translation of the Bible, recorded how David ‘chose five slight stones out of the river’ to confront Goliath with (1 Samuel 17:40), where the Authorized Version of 1611 has ‘smooth stones’), and it survived dialectally into the 20th century.

By the 14th century, however, it was evolving into ‘slim’, and this eventually became, in the early 16th century, ‘small in amount’. English acquired the adjective from Old Norse sléttr ‘smooth’, and Old Norse was also the original source of a verb slight [13], meaning ‘make level or smooth’. This died out in the 17th century, however, and the modern verb slight ‘disdain, snub’, first recorded at the end of the 16th century, is derived from the adjective, in the sense ‘of little importance’.

The noun comes from the verb.
solicit: solicit: [15] The ultimate source of solicit is Latin sollicitus ‘agitated’, which also gave English solicitous [16]. It was a compound adjective, formed from sollus ‘whole’ (source also of English solemn) and citus, the past participle of ciēre ‘move’ (source of English cite, excite, etc) – hence literally ‘completely moved’.

From it was formed the verb sollicitāre ‘disturb, agitate’, which passed into English via Old French solliciter. By the time it arrived it had acquired the additional meaning ‘manage affairs’, which lies behind the derived solicitor [15]; and the original ‘disturb’ (which has since died out) gave rise in the 16th century to ‘trouble with requests’. French insouciant, borrowed by English in the 19th century, goes back ultimately to Latin sollicitāre.
=> cite, excite, incite, insouciant, solemn, solid
stage: stage: [13] A stage (like a stable) is etymologically a ‘standing-place’. The word comes via Old French estage from Vulgar Latin *staticum ‘standing-place, position’, a derivative of Latin stāre ‘stand’ (to which English stand is distantly related). By the time it arrived in English it had acquired the additional connotation of a ‘set of positions one above the other’, and this led to its use in the more concrete senses ‘storey, floor’ and ‘raised platform’.

The specific application to a ‘platform in a theatre’ emerged in the mid-16th century. The sense ‘section of a journey’ (on which stagecoach [17] is based) developed at the end of the 16th century, presumably on the analogy of physical levels succeeding one another in ‘steps’ or ‘tiers’; and the further metaphoricization to ‘step in development’ took place in the 19th century.
=> stand
stigma: stigma: [16] Greek stígma denoted a ‘mark made on the skin with a sharp implement’, hence a ‘tattoo’ or ‘brand’. It was derived from the Indo- European base *stig- ‘be sharp, pierce’, which also produced English stick, stitch, etc. By the time it arrived in English, via Latin stigma, it has acquired the connotation of a ‘brand of shame’, and it was also used specifically for the marks made on Christ’s hands and feet by the nails of the cross.
=> stick, stitch
tenor: tenor: [13] Latin tenor was derived from the verb tenēre ‘hold’ (source also of English tenacious, tenant, etc), and so etymologically denoted ‘that which is held to’, hence a ‘continuous course’. This evolved in due course into the ‘general sense or import’ of a piece of speech or writing, in which sense English acquired it via Anglo- Norman tenur. The musical term tenor, which is basically the same word, arrived in the 14th century via Italian tenore and Old French tenor. It denotes etymologically the voice that ‘holds’ the melodic line.
=> tenant
topic: topic: [16] Greek tópos meant ‘place’. From it was derived the adjective topikós ‘of a place’, which came to mean ‘commonplace’. Aristotle used it in the title of his treatise Tà topiká, which contains commonplace arguments, and it was with direct reference to this that the word first arrived in English (via Latin topica). The sense ‘subject, theme’ arose in the 18th century from the notion of the various heads of argument contained in Tà topiká and works like it.

The derived topical [16] originally meant ‘of topics’; the specialization to ‘of topics of the day, of current interest’ is as recent as the second half of the 19th century. The word’s original notion of ‘place’ is preserved in topography [15] and topology [17]. The diminutive form of Greek tópos was tópion ‘small place’, hence ‘field’.

Latin took over its plural as topia, and used it for ‘ornamental gardening’. From it was derived the adjective topiārius, which forms the basis of English topiary [16].
=> topiary, topography
urban: urban: [17] Urban comes from Latin urbānus, a derivative of urbs ‘city’ (a word of unknown origin). It was preceded into English by urbane [16], which is essentially the same word, but came via Old French urbaine. It was originally used as urban is now, but after urban arrived it gradually took the metaphorical path to ‘smooth, sophisticated’. The derivatives suburb and suburban date from the 14th and 17th centuries respectively; and suburbia was coined in the 1890s.
=> suburban, urbane
-ate (1): word-forming element used in forming nouns from Latin words ending in -atus, -atum (such as estate, primate, senate). Those that came to English via Old and Middle French often arrived with -at, but an -e was added after c. 1400 to indicate the long vowel. The suffix also can mark adjectives, formed from Latin past participals in -atus, -ata (such as desolate, moderate, separate), again, they often were adopted in Middle English as -at, with an -e appended after c. 1400.
antic (n.): 1520s, "grotesque or comical gesture," from Italian antico "antique," from Latin antiquus "old" (see antique). Originally (like grotesque) a 16c. Italian word referring to the strange and fantastic representations on ancient murals unearthed around Rome (especially originally the Baths of Titus, rediscovered 16c.); later extended to "any bizarre thing or behavior," in which sense it first arrived in English. As an adjective in English from 1580s, "grotesque, bizarre."
applaud (v.): late 15c. (implied in applauding), "to express agreement or approval; to praise," from Latin applaudere "to clap the hands in approbation, to approve by clapping hands; to strike upon, beat," from ad "to" (see ad-) + plaudere "to clap" (see plaudit). Sense of "express approval of" is from 1590s; that of "to clap the hands" is from 1590s. Figurative sense arrived in English before literal. Related: Applauded; applauding.
arrive (v.): c. 1200, "reach land, reach the end of a journey by sea," from Anglo-French ariver, Old French ariver (11c.) "to come to land," from Vulgar Latin *arripare "to touch the shore," from Latin ad ripam "to the shore," from ad "to" (see ad-) + ripa "shore" (see riparian). The original notion is of coming ashore after a long voyage. Of journeys other than by sea, from late 14c. Sense of "to come to a position or state of mind" is from late 14c. Related: Arrived; arriving.
Bronx: named for Jonas Bronck, who settled there in 1641.
Jonas Bronck, who arrived at New Amsterdam in 1639, and whose name is perpetuated in Bronx Borough, Bronx Park, Bronxville -- in New York -- was a Scandinavian, in all probability a Dane and originally, as it seems, from Thorshavn, Faroe Islands, where his father was a pastor in the Lutheran Church. Faroe then belonged to Denmark-Norway and had been settled by Norwegians. The official language of the island in Bronck's days was Danish. ... Bronck may have been a Swede if we judge by the name alone for the name of Brunke is well known in Sweden. [John Oluf Evjen, "Scandinavian immigrants in New York, 1630-1674," Minneapolis, 1916]
Bronx cheer first recorded 1929.