英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

abash [abash 词源字典]: abash: [14] Abash shares a common ancestry with abeyance [16], although the latter underwent an about-turn in meaning in the 17th century which disguises their relationship. They go back to a Latin verb batāre, meaning ‘yawn’ or ‘gape’. This was borrowed into French as baer, later bayer (it was the source of English bay ‘recessed space’).

The addition of the prefix es- (from Latin ex-) produced esbaer, later e(s)bahir ‘gape with astonishment’, whence, via the present stem e(s)bass-, came English abash, which originally meant ‘stand amazed’ as well as ‘embarrass, discomfit’. (Bashful is a 16thcentury derivative, with elision of the a-, which was first used by the dramatist Nicholas Udall.) Addition of the prefix a- to Old French baer, meanwhile, had given abaer ‘aspire after’, and its noun abeance ‘aspiration, desire’.

In legal terminology, this word was used in French for the condition of a person in expectation or hope of receiving property, but in English the focus quickly became reversed to the property, and its condition of being temporarily without an owner.
=> abeyance, bashful[abash etymology, abash origin, 英语词源]
accolade: accolade: [17] Accolade goes back to an assumed Vulgar Latin verb *accollāre, meaning ‘put one’s arms round someone’s neck’ (collum is Latin for ‘neck’, and is the source of English collar). It put in its first recorded appearance in the Provençal noun acolada, which was borrowed into French as accolade and thence made its way into English. A memory of the original literal meaning is preserved in the use of accolade to refer to the ceremonial striking of a sword on a new knight’s shoulders; the main current sense ‘congratulatory expression of approval’ is a later development.
=> collar
act: act: [14] Act, action, active, actor all go back to Latin agere ‘do, perform’ (which is the source of a host of other English derivatives, from agent to prodigal). The past participle of this verb was āctus, from which we get act, partly through French acte, but in the main directly from Latin. The Latin agent noun, āctor, came into the language at about the same time, although at first it remained a rather uncommon word in English, with technical legal uses; it was not until the end of the 16th century that it came into its own in the theatre (player had hitherto been the usual term).

Other Latin derivatives of the past participial stem āct- were the noun āctiō, which entered English via Old French action, and the adjective āctīvus, which gave English active. See also ACTUAL.
=> action, active, agent, cogent, examine, prodigal
acute: acute: [14] Acute derives from Latin acūtus ‘sharp’ (which was also the source of English ague). This was the past participle of the verb acuere ‘sharpen’, which in turn was probably formed from the noun acus ‘needle’. Like the related acid, acetic, and acrid, it can be traced back to an Indo-European base *ak- ‘be pointed’, which was also the ultimate source of oxygen and edge.
=> acetic, acid, acrid, ague, cute, edge, oxygen
aegis: aegis: [18] The notion of ‘protection’ contained in this word goes back to classical mythology, in which one of the functions or attributes of the Greek god Zeus (and later of Roman Jupiter or Minerva) was the giving of protection. This was usually represented visually as a shield, traditionally held to be made of goatskin – hence Greek aigís, the name of the shield, came to be associated in the popular imagination with aix (aig- in its stem form), the Greek word for ‘goat’. English borrowed the word directly from Latin.
affray: affray: [14] Affray is a word of mixed Germanic and Romance origin. The noun comes from the verb, ‘alarm’ (now obsolete, but still very much with us in the form of its past participle, afraid), which was borrowed into English from Anglo- Norman afrayer and Old French effreer and esfreer. These go back to a hypothetical Vulgar Latin verb *exfridāre, which was composed of the Latin prefix ex- ‘out’ and an assumed noun *fridus, which Latin took from the Frankish *frithuz ‘peace’ (cognate with German friede ‘peace’, and with the name Frederick). The underlying meaning of the word is thus ‘take away someone’s peace’.
=> afraid, belfry
after: after: [OE] In the first millennium AD many Germanic languages had forms cognate with Old English æfter (Gothic aftra, for example, and Old Norse aptr), but, with the exception of Dutch achter, none survive. It is not clear what their ultimate origin is, but the suffix they share may well be a comparative one, and it is possible that they derive from a Germanic base *af- (represented in Old English æftan ‘from behind’).

It has been suggested that this goes back to Indo-European *ap- (source of Latin ab ‘away, from’ and English of(f)), in which case after would mean literally ‘more off’ – that is, ‘further away’. Nautical aft is probably a shortening of abaft, formed, with the prefixes a- ‘on’ and be- ‘by’, from Old English æftan.
=> of, off
age: age: [13] Age has undergone considerable transmutations and abbreviations since its beginnings in Latin. Its immediate source in English is Old French aage, which was the product of a hypothetical Vulgar Latin form *aetāticum (the t is preserved in Provençal atge). This was based on Latin aetāt- (stem of aetās), which was a shortening of aevitās, which in turn came from aevum ‘lifetime’.

This entered English in more recognizable form in medieval, primeval, etc; it is related to Greek aión ‘age’, from which English gets aeon [17], and it can be traced back to the same root that produced (via Old Norse eí) the now archaic adverb ay(e) ‘ever’ (as in ‘will aye endure’).
=> aeon, aye
air: 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
ale: ale: [OE] Old English ealu ‘ale’ goes back to a Germanic root *aluth-, which also produced Old Norse öl (Scandinavian languages still use alerelated words, whereas other Germanic languages now only use beer-related words; English is the only one to retain both). Going beyond Germanic in time takes us back to the word’s ultimate Indo-European source, a base meaning ‘bitter’ which is also represented in alum and aluminium. Ale and beer seem to have been virtually synonymous to the Anglo- Saxons; various distinctions in usage have developed over the centuries, such as that ale is made without hops, and is heavier (or some would say lighter) than beer, but most of the differences have depended on local usage.

The word bridal is intimately connected with ale. Nowadays used as an adjective, and therefore subconsciously associated with other adjectives ending in -al, in Old English it was a noun, literally ‘bride ale’, that is, a beer-drinking session to celebrate a marriage.
alimony: alimony: [17] Alimony is an anglicization of Latin alimōnia, which is based on the verb alere ‘nourish’ (source of alma ‘bounteous’, as in alma mater, and of alumnus). This in turn goes back to a hypothetical root *al-, which is also the basis of English adolescent, adult, altitude (from Latin altus ‘high’), and old.

The original sense ‘nourishment, sustenance’ has now died out, but the specialized ‘support for a former wife’ is of equal antiquity in English. The -mony element in the word represents Latin -mōnia, a fairly meaning-free suffix used for forming nouns from verbs (it is related to -ment, which coincidentally was also combined with alere, to form alimentary), but in the later 20th century it took on a newly productive role in the sense ‘provision of maintenance for a former partner’. Palimony ‘provision for a former non-married partner’ was coined around 1979, and in the 1980s appeared dallymony ‘provision for somebody one has jilted’.
=> adult, altitude, alumnus, old
all: all: [OE] Words related to all are found throughout the Germanic languages (German all, Dutch al, Old Norse allr, Gothic alls, for instance). They can probably all be traced back to a hypothetical Germanic ancestor *alnaz. Connections outside Germanic are not known, unless Lithuanian aliai ‘completely’ is a relative.
amuse: amuse: [15] Amuse is probably a French creation, formed with the prefix a- from the verb muser (from which English gets muse ‘ponder’ [14]). The current meaning ‘divert, entertain’ did not begin to emerge until the 17th century, and even so the commonest application of the verb in the 17th and 18th centuries was ‘deceive, cheat’. This seems to have developed from an earlier ‘bewilder, puzzle’, pointing back to an original sense ‘make someone stare open-mouthed’.

This links with the probable source of muser, namely muse ‘animal’s mouth’, from medieval Latin mūsum (which gave English muzzle [15]). There is no connection with the inspirational muse, responsible for music and museums.
=> muse, muzzle
anchor: anchor: [OE] English borrowed this word from Latin in the 9th century, but its ultimate source is Greek ágkūra (which goes back to an Indo- European base *angg- ‘bent’, also the source of angle and ankle). Originally it was spelled ancor, reflecting Latin ancora; the inauthentic h began to creep in in the 16th century, in imitation of the learned-looking but misguided Latin spelling anchora.
=> angle, ankle
anger: anger: [12] The original notion contained in this word was of ‘distress’ or ‘affliction’; ‘rage’ did not begin to enter the picture until the 13th century. English acquired it from Old Norse angr ‘grief’, and it is connected with a group of words which contain connotations of ‘constriction’: German and Dutch eng (and Old English enge) mean ‘narrow’, Greek ánkhein meant ‘squeeze, strangle’ (English gets angina from it), and Latin angustus (source of English anguish) also meant ‘narrow’. All these forms point back to an Indo-European base *angg- ‘narrow’.
=> angina, anguish
angle: angle: There have been two distinct words angle in English. The older is now encountered virtually only in its derivatives, angler and angling, but until the early 19th century an angle was a ‘fishing hook’ (or, by extension, ‘fishing tackle’). It entered the language in the Old English period, and was based on Germanic *angg- (source also of German angel ‘fishing tackle’).

An earlier form of the word appears to have been applied by its former inhabitants to a fishhook-shaped area of Schleswig, in the Jutland peninsula; now Angeln, they called it Angul, and so they themselves came to be referred to as Angles. They brought their words with them to England, of course, and so both the country and the language, English, now contain a reminiscence of their fishhooks. Angle in the sense of a ‘figure formed by two intersecting lines’ entered the language in the 14th century (Chaucer is its first recorded user).

It came from Latin angulus ‘corner’, either directly or via French angle. The Latin word was originally a diminutive of *angus, which is related to other words that contain the notion of ‘bending’, such as Greek ágkūra (ultimate source of English anchor) and English ankle. They all go back to Indo-European *angg- ‘bent’, and it has been speculated that the fishhook angle, with its temptingly bent shape, may derive from the same source.
=> english; anchor, ankle
ankle: ankle: [14] Ankle comes from a probable Old Norse word *ankula. It has several relatives in other Germanic languages (German and Dutch enkel, for instance, and Swedish and Danish ankel) and can be traced back to an Indo- European base *angg- ‘bent’ (ultimate source also of anchor and angle). Before the Old Norse form spread through the language, English had its own native version of the word: anclēow. This survived until the 15th century in mainstream English, and for much longer in local dialects.
=> anchor, angle
annual: annual: [14] Annual comes, via Old French annuel, from annuālis, a late Latin adjective based on annus ‘year’ (perhaps as a blend of two earlier, classical Latin adjectives, annuus and annālis – ultimate source of English annals [16]). Annus itself may go back to an earlier, unrecorded *atnos, probably borrowed from an ancient Indo-European language of the Italian peninsula, such as Oscan or Umbrian.

It appears to be related to Gothic athnam ‘years’ and Sanskrit átati ‘go, wander’. The medieval Latin noun annuitās, formed from the adjective annuus, produced French annuité, which was borrowed into English as annuity in the 15th century.
=> annals, anniversary, annuity
antimony: antimony: [15] Antimony, from medieval Latin antimōnium, was used by alchemists of the Middle Ages for ‘stibnite’, the mineral from which antimony is obtained, and for ‘stibium’, or ‘black antimony’, a heated and powdered version of the mineral used for eye make-up. The element antimony itself was first described in the late 18th century, when it was called regulus of antimony; the British chemist Humphry Davy appears to have been the first to apply the simple term antimony to it, in 1812.

The ultimate origins of the word antimony are obscure, but attempts have been made to link it with Latin stibium (source of Somebody, the chemical symbol for antimony). It has been speculated that Latin antimōnium may have been a modification of Arabic ithmid, which was perhaps borrowed from Greek stimmi or stíbi (source of Latin stibium).

This in turn has been conjecturally traced back to an Egyptian word stm, which was used for a sort of powder applied to the eyelids as make-up.
arbour: arbour: [14] Despite its formal resemblance to, and semantic connections with, Latin arbor ‘tree’, arbour is not etymologically related to it. In fact, its nearest English relative is herb. When it first came into English it was erber, which meant ‘lawn’ or ‘herb/flower garden’. This was borrowed, via Anglo-Norman, from Old French erbier, a derivative of erbe ‘herb’.

This in turn goes back to Latin herba ‘grass, herb’ (in the 16th century a spelling with initial h was common in England). Gradually, it seems that the sense ‘grassy plot’ evolved to ‘separate, secluded nook in a garden’; at first, the characteristic feature of such shady retreats was their patch of grass, but their seclusion was achieved by surrounding trees or bushes, and eventually the criterion for an arbour shifted to ‘being shaded by trees’.

Training on a trellis soon followed, and the modern arbour as ‘bower’ was born. The shift from grass and herbaceous plants to trees no doubt prompted the alteration in spelling from erber to arbour, after Latin arbor; this happened in the 15th and 16th centuries.
=> herb
arctic: arctic: [14] Etymologically, the Arctic is the region of the ‘bear’. Nothing to do with polar bears, though. The characteristic constellations of the northern hemisphere are the ‘Little Bear’ (Latin Ursa Minor), which contains the northern celestial pole, and the Plough, otherwise known as the ‘Great Bear’ (Latin Ursa Major). The perception that they resemble a bear (Greek arktos) goes back to ancient times, and the Greeks used the derived adjective arktikos, literally ‘relating to bears’, to denote ‘northern’.

By the time this reached English, via Latin ar(c)ticus and Old French artique, it was being applied specifically to the northern polar regions. (The original English spelling, reflecting the French form, was artic. The more etymologically ‘correct’ arctic came in in the 17th century, but uncertain spellers are still apt to regress to artic.) Antarctic [14] for the corresponding southern polar region likewise comes ultimately from Greek (antarktikos, with the prefix anti- ‘opposite’). Arcturus [14], the name of a very bright star in the constellation Boötes, means literally ‘bear watcher’ or ‘bear guardian’ (Greek Arktouros), a reference to the fact that the tail of the Great Bear points towards it.
art: art: [13] Like arm, arthritis, and article, art goes back to an Indo-European root *ar-, which meant ‘put things together, join’. Putting things together implies some skill: hence Latin ars ‘skill’. Its stem art- produced Old French art, the source of the English word. It brought with it the notion of ‘skill’, which it still retains; the modern association with painting, sculpture, etc did not begin until the mid 17th century.

Latin derivatives of ars include the verb artīre ‘instruct in various skills’, from which ultimately English gets artisan [16]; and artificium, a compound formed with a variant of facere ‘do, make’, from which we get artificial [14].
=> arm, arthritis, article, artificial, artisan, inert
article: article: [13] Like art, arm, and arthritis, article goes back to an Indo-European root *ar-, which meant ‘put things together, join, fit’. Amongst its derivatives was Latin artus ‘joint’ (a form parallel to Greek árthron, source of arthritis), of which the diminutive was articulus ‘small joint’. This was extended metaphorically to mean ‘division, part’, and when the word first entered English, via Old French article, it was used for a particular clause of a treaty, of a contract, or specifically of the Creed.

Its application to an ‘item, thing’ is a comparatively late development, from the start of the 19th century. A Latin derivative of articulus, the verb articulāre ‘divide into joints’, hence ‘speak distinctly’, gave rise to English articulate [16].
=> arm, art, arthritis
artillery: artillery: [14] Originally artillery meant ‘military supplies, munitions’ (Chaucer used it thus); it was not until the late 15th century that it came to be used for ‘weapons for firing missiles’ – originally catapults, bows, etc. The source of the English word was Old French artillerie, a derivative of the verb artiller ‘equip, arm’. This was an alteration of an earlier form atillier, probably influenced by art, but the ultimate provenance of atillier is not clear.

Some etymologists trace it back to a hypothetical Latin verb *apticulāre ‘make fit, adapt’, a derivative of aptus ‘fitting’ (source of English apt and adapt); others regard it as a variant of Old French atirier ‘arrange, equip’ (source of English attire [13]), which was based on tire ‘order, rank’, a noun of Germanic origin, related to Latin deus ‘god’.
atrocious: atrocious: [17] Traced back to its ultimate source, atrocious meant something not too dissimilar to ‘having a black eye’. Latin āter was ‘black, dark’ (it occurs also in English atrabilious ‘melancholic’ [17] – Greek mélās meant ‘black’), and the stem *-oc-, *-ox meant ‘looking, appearing’ (Latin oculus ‘eye’ and ferox ‘fierce’ – based on ferus ‘wild’, and source of English ferocious – were formed from it, and it goes back to an earlier Indo-European base which also produced Greek ōps ‘eye’ and English eye).

Combined, they formed atrox, literally ‘of a dark or threatening appearance’, hence ‘gloomy, cruel’. English borrowed it (in the stem form atrōci-) originally in the sense ‘wantonly cruel’.
=> eye, ferocious, inoculate, ocular
attempt: attempt: [14] Attempting is etymologically related to tempting. The Latin verb attemptāre was formed with the prefix ad- from temptāre, which meant ‘try’ as well as ‘tempt’ (the semantic connection is preserved in modern English try, with the contrasting senses ‘attempt’ and ‘put to the test’). The Latin form passed into Old French as atenter (hence modern French attenter), but was later latinized back to attempter, the form in which English acquired it.
=> tempt
avocado: avocado: [17] Anyone tucking into an avocado could well be taken aback to learn that in the South American Indian language from which the word originally came, it meant literally ‘testicle’. The Nahuatl Indians named the fruit ahuacatl ‘testicle’ on account of its shape. The Spanish conquistadors took the word over as aguacate, but before long this became altered by folk etymology (the substitution of familiar for unfamiliar forms) to avocado (literally ‘advocate’ in Spanish).

When English borrowed the word, folk etymology took a hand yet again, for in the late 17th century it became known as the alligator pear, a name which survived into the 20th century.
awe: awe: [13] Old English had the word ege, meaning ‘awe’, but modern English awe is a Scandinavian borrowing; the related Old Norse agi steadily infiltrated the language from the northeast southwards during the Middle Ages. Agi came, like ege, from a hypothetical Germanic form *agon, which in turn goes back to an Indo-European base *agh- (whence also Greek ákhos ‘pain’). The guttural g sound of the 13th-century English word (technically a voiced velar spirant) was changed to w during the Middle English period. This was a general change, but it is not always reflected in spelling – as in owe and ought, for instance, which were originally the same word.
axe: axe: [OE] Relatives of the word axe are widespread throughout the Indo-European languages, from German axt and Dutch aaks to Latin ascia and Greek axínē. These point back to a hypothetical Indo-European *agwesī or *akusī, which denoted some sort of cutting or hewing tool. The Old English form was æx, and there is actually no historical justification for the modern British spelling axe, which first appeared in the late 14th century; as late as 1885 the Oxford English Dictionary made ax its main form, and it remains so in the USA.
back: back: [OE] Back goes back to a prehistoric West and North Germanic *bakam, which was represented in several pre-medieval and medieval Germanic languages: Old High German bah, for example, and Old Norse bak. In most of them, however, it has been ousted by relatives of English ridge, originally ‘spine’ (such as German rücken and Swedish rygg), and only English retains back.
=> bacon
badminton: badminton: [19] The game of ‘battledore and shuttlecock’ has been around for some time (it appears to go back to the 16th century; the word battledore, which may come ultimately from Portuguese batedor ‘beater’, first turns up in the 15th century, meaning ‘implement for beating clothes when washing them’, but by the 16th century is being used for a ‘small racket’; while shuttlecock, so named because it is hit back and forth, first appears in the early 16th century, in a poem of John Skelton’s).

This was usually a fairly informal, improvised affair, however, and latterly played mainly by children; the modern, codified game of badminton did not begin until the 1860s or 1870s, and takes its name from the place where it was apparently first played, Badminton House, Avon, country seat of the dukes of Beaufort. (A slightly earlier application of the word badminton had been to a cooling summer drink, a species of claret cup.)
bail: bail: There are now three distinct words bail in English, although they may all be related. Bail ‘money deposited as a guarantee when released’ [14] comes from Old French bail, a derivative of the verb baillier ‘take charge of, carry’, whose source was Latin bājulāre ‘carry’, from bājulus ‘carrier’. Bail ‘remove water’ [13], also spelled bale, probably comes ultimately from the same source; its immediate antecedent was Old French baille ‘bucket’, which perhaps went back to a hypothetical Vulgar Latin *bājula, a feminine form of bājulus.

The bail on top of cricket stumps [18] has been connected with Latin bājulus too – this could have been the source of Old French bail ‘cross-beam’ (‘loadcarrying beam’), which could quite plausibly have been applied to cricket bails; on the other hand it may go back to Old French bail, baille ‘enclosed court’ (source of English bailey [13]), which originally in English meant the ‘encircling walls of a castle’ but by the 19th century at the latest had developed the sense ‘bar for separating animals in a stable’.
=> bailey
bake: bake: [OE] The Old English verb bacan goes back to a prehistoric Germanic base *bak-, which also produced German backen, Dutch bakken, and Swedish baka; its ultimate source was the Indo-European base *bhog-, another descendant of which was Greek phógein ‘roast’. Derivatives of the English verb include batch [15], which comes from Old English *bæcce, literally ‘something baked’, and the name Baxter, which originally meant ‘female baker’.
=> batch
bamboo: bamboo: [16] Bamboo appears to come from a Malay word mambu. This was brought back to Europe by the Portuguese explorers, and enjoyed a brief currency in English from the 17th to the 18th century. However, for reasons no one can explain, the initial m of this word became changed to b, and it acquired an s at the end, producing a form found in Latin texts of the time as bambusa. This appears to have passed into English via Dutch bamboes, so the earliest English version of the word was bambos. As so often happens in such cases, the final s was misinterpreted as a plural ending, so it dropped off to give the new ‘singular’ bamboo.
bandy: bandy: [16] To ‘bandy words with someone’ may go back to an original idea of ‘banding together to oppose others’. The word comes from French bander ‘oppose’, which is possibly a derivative of bande ‘group, company’ (source of English band). The rather complex semantic development goes from ‘taking sides’, through ‘opposing a third party’, ‘exchanging blows’, ‘exchanging hits’ (in the 16th and 17th centuries it was a term in tennis), to ‘exchanging hostile words’.

The adjective bandy [17], as in ‘bandy legs’, probably comes from the noun bandy ‘curved stick used in an early form of hockey’ (the game was also known as bandy). It may ultimately be related to the verb bandy, the connection being the notion of knocking a ball to and fro.
=> band
bare: bare: [OE] Bare is an ancient word, traceable back to an Indo-European *bhosos. Descendants of this in non-Germanic languages include Lithuanian basas ‘barefoot’, but for the most part it is the Germanic languages that have adopted the word. Germanic *bazaz produced German and Swedish bar, Dutch baar, and, via Old English bær, modern English bare.
barge: barge: [13] Barge comes in the first instance from Old French barge, but speculation has pushed it further back to medieval Latin *barica, which would have derived from báris, a Greek word for an Egyptian boat. This hypothetical *barica would have been a by-form of late Latin barca, which came into English via Old French as barque, also spelled bark, ‘sailing vessel’ [15] (source of embark). The metaphorical use of the verb barge, ‘move clumsily or rudely’, is barely a hundred years old; it comes from the ponderous progress made by barges.
=> bark, barque, embark
baron: baron: [12] The earliest historical sense of baron, ‘tenant under the feudal system who held his land and title directly from the king’, can be traced back to its probable source, medieval Latin barō, which originally meant simply ‘man’, and hence ‘vassal’ or ‘retainer’. The word was of course brought into English by the Normans, as Anglo-Norman barun, and from earliest times was used as a title for someone belonging to the lowest order of peerage. Some have suggested an ultimate Germanic origin, and compared Old High German baro ‘freeman’.
bass: bass: Bass the fish [15] and bass the musical term [15] are of course completely unrelated words, with different pronunciations. Bass meaning ‘of the lowest register’ is simply a modified spelling of the adjective base, under the influence of Italian basso. Related words are bassoon [18], from French basson, and basset-horn [19], a partial translation of Italian corno di bassetto, literally ‘bass horn’.

The bass is a spiny-finned fish, and it may be that its name is related to Old English byrst ‘bristle’. The Old English term for the fish was bærs, which survived dialectally until the 19th century in the form barse, and it is thought that it goes back to a Germanic base *bars- (source of German barsch); this may be cognate with *bors-, from which Old English byrst came.

In the 15th century, barse underwent some sort of phonetic mutation to produce bass.
=> base, bassoon
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
bat: bat: Bat as in ‘cricket bat’ [OE] and bat the animal [16] come from entirely different sources. Bat the wooden implement first appears in late Old English as batt ‘cudgel’, but it is not clear where it ultimately came from. Some have postulated a Celtic source, citing Gaulish andabata ‘gladiator’, which may be related to English battle and Russian bat ‘cudgel’, but whatever the word’s origins, it seems likely that at some point it was influenced by Old French batte, from battre ‘beat’.

The flying bat is an alteration of Middle English backe, which was borrowed from a Scandinavian language. The word is represented in Old Swedish natbakka ‘night bat’, and appears to be an alteration of an earlier -blaka, as in Old Norse lethrblaka, literally ‘leatherflapper’. If this is so, bat would mean etymologically ‘flapper’, which would be of a piece with other names for the animal, particularly German fledermaus ‘fluttermouse’ and English flittermouse, which remained a dialectal word for ‘bat’ into the 20th century.

It is unusual for the name of such a common animal not to go right back to Old English; in this case the Old English word was hrēremūs, which survived dialectally into the 20th century as rearmouse.
=> battle
bath: bath: [OE] Bath is a word widely dispersed among the Germanic languages (German has bad, as does Swedish). Like the others, Old English bæth goes back to a hypothetical Germanic *batham, which perhaps derives from the base *ba- (on the suffix -th see BIRTH). If this is so, it would be an indication (backed up by other derivatives of the same base, such as bake, and cognate words such as Latin fovēre ‘heat’, source of English foment) that the original notion contained in the word was of ‘heat’ rather than ‘washing’.

This is preserved in the steam bath and the Turkish bath. The original verbal derivative was bathe, which goes back to Germanic *bathōn (another derivative of which, Old Norse batha, had a reflexive form bathask, which probably lies behind English bask); use of bath as a verb dates from the 15th century.
=> bask, bathe
be: be: [OE] There are four distinct components that go to make up the modern English verb be. The infinitive form be comes ultimately from an Indo-European base *bheu-, *bhu-, which also produced, by other routes, future and physical. Its Germanic descendant was *bu-, which signified on the one hand ‘dwell’ (from which we get booth, bower, byre, build, burly, byelaw, and the final element of neighbour), and on the other hand ‘grow, become’, which led to its adoption as part of the verb expressing ‘being’ (in Old English particularly with the future sense of ‘coming to be’). Am and is go back to the ancient Indo- European verb ‘be’, *es- or *s-, which has contributed massively to ‘be’ verbs throughout all Indo-European languages (third person present singulars Greek esti, Latin est, French est, German ist, Sanskrit ásti, Welsh ys, for example) The Indo-European first and third person singular forms were, respectively, ésmi and ésti.

For the present plural Old English used the related sind(on) (as found in Latin sunt, French sont, and German sind), but this died out in the 12th century, to be replaced by are, which comes from a Germanic base *ar- of unknown origin. From the same source is the now archaic second person singular art. The past tense forms was, were come ultimately from an Indo-European base *weswhich meant ‘dwell, remain’.

Related words in other Indo-European languages include Sanskrit vásati ‘dwell, remain’ and Gothic wisan ‘remain, continue’.
=> booth, bower, build, burly, byelaw, byre
beaker: beaker: [14] The immediate source of beaker was Old Norse bikarr. It is widespread in the West Germanic languages (German has becher, for instance), and it seems likely that Old Norse acquired it from Old Saxon bikeri. But it was borrowed into prehistoric West Germanic from medieval Latin bicarius, which in turn goes back to Greek bikos ‘earthenware jug’ (ultimate source of English pitcher [13]).
=> pitcher
bear: bear: [OE] The two English words bear ‘carry’ and bear the animal come from completely different sources. The verb, Old English beran, goes back via Germanic *ber- to Indo-European *bher-, which already contained the two central meaning elements that have remained with its offspring ever since, ‘carry’ and ‘give birth’. It is the source of a very large number of words in the Indo-European languages, including both Germanic (German gebären ‘give birth’, Swedish börd ‘birth’) and non-Germanic (Latin ferre and Greek phérein ‘bear’, source of English fertile and amphora [17], and Russian brat ‘seize’).

And a very large number of other English words are related to it: on the ‘carrying’ side, barrow, berth, bier, burden, and possibly brim; and on the ‘giving birth’ side, birth itself and bairn ‘child’ [16]. Borne and born come from boren, the Old English past participle of bear; the distinction in usage between the two (borne for ‘carried’, born for ‘given birth’) arose in the early 17th century.

Etymologically, the bear is a ‘brown animal’. Old English bera came from West Germanic *bero (whence also German bär and Dutch beer), which may in turn go back to Indo- European *bheros, related to English brown. The poetic name for the bear, bruin [17], follows the same semantic pattern (it comes from Dutch bruin ‘brown’), and beaver means etymologically ‘brown animal’ too.
=> amphora, bairn, barrow, berth, bier, born, burden, fertile, fortune, paraphernalia, suffer; brown
beat: beat: [OE] Old English bēatan and the related Old Norse bauta may be traced back to a prehistoric Germanic *bautan. It has been conjectured that this could be connected with *fu-, the base of Latin confūtāre and refūtāre (source respectively of English confute [16] and refute [16]) and of Latin fustis ‘club’ (from which English gets fusty [14]).
=> beetle, confute, fusty, refute
beaver: beaver: [OE] Like bear, beaver appears to mean etymologically ‘brown animal’. Old English beofor or befor came from a prehistoric West and North Germanic *bebruz, which in turn went back to an Indo-European *bhebhrús, a derivative of the base *bhru- ‘brown’. Other words for ‘beaver’ from the same source include Czech bobr, Lithuanian bebrùs, and Latin fiber.
bee: bee: [OE] Old English bēo ‘bee’ came from a prehistoric West and North Germanic *bīōn, source also of German biene, Dutch bij, and Swedish bi, which may all be traceable back to an Indo-European base *bhi- ‘quiver’. This, if it is true, means that the bee was originally named as the ‘quivering’, or perhaps ‘humming’ insect. Latin fucus ‘drone’ appears to be related.
beetle: beetle: English has three separate words beetle. The commonest, beetle the insect, comes from Old English bitula, which was a derivative of the verb bītan ‘bite’: beetle hence means etymologically ‘the biter’. Beetle ‘hammer’, now largely restricted to various technical contexts, is also Old English: the earliest English form, bētel, goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *bautilaz, a derivative of the verb *bautan, from which English gets beat (the cognate Old Norse beytill meant ‘penis’).

The adjective beetle [14], as in ‘beetle brows’, and its related verb are of unknown origin, although it has been speculated that there is some connection with the tufted antennae of certain species of beetle, which may suggest eyebrows.
=> bite; beat
belch: belch: [OE] Belch first appears in recognizable form in the 15th century, but it can scarcely not be related to belk ‘eructate’, which goes back to Old English bealcan and survived dialectally into the modern English period. Belch itself may derive either from an unrecorded variant of bealcan, *belcan (with the c here representing a /ch/ sound), or from a related Old English verb belcettan ‘eructate’.

But whichever route it took, its ultimate source was probably a Germanic base *balk-or *belk-, from which German got bölken ‘bleat, low, belch’. Belch was originally a perfectly inoffensive word; it does not seem to have been until the 17th century that its associations began to drag it down towards vulgarity.