quword 趣词
Word Origins Dictionary
- hansom




- hansom: [19] The hansom cab, the taxi of the second half of the 19th century, was the brainchild of James Aloysius Hansom (1803– 82), an architect, whose other main claim to fame is that he designed Birmingham town hall. In 1834 he took out a patent for a Safety Cab, which included many features incorporated into the hansom cab when it came into general use in the late 1840s. In the 1890s the word was used as a verb: ‘To think that I … a raging Democrat, should be hansoming it to and fro between my Ladies and Honourables’, Sabine Baring-Gould Armine 1890.
- bare (v.)




- Old English barian, from bare (adj.). Related: Bared; baring.
- midriff (n.)




- Old English midhrif, from mid "mid" (see mid) + hrif "belly," from Proto-Germanic *hrefiz- (cognates: Old High German href, Old Frisian hrif "belly"), from PIE *kwrep- "body, form, appearance" (see corporeal). More or less obsolete after 18c. except in phrase to tickle (one's) midriff "to cause laughter," the word revived 1941 in fashion usage for "portion of a woman's garment that covers the belly," as a euphemistic avoidance of belly; sense inverted and extended 1970 to a belly-baring style of women's top.