quword 趣词
Word Origins Dictionary
- beestings (n.)




- "colostrum," Old English bysting, from beost, a general West Germanic word (cognates: Old High German biost, German Biest, Middle Dutch and Dutch biest) of unknown origin.
- beeswax (n.)




- 1670s, from genitive of bee + wax. As a jocular alteration of business (usually in an injunction to someone to mind his own) attested from 1934 in Lower East Side slang as reproduced in Henry Roth's "Call It Sleep."
- hartebeest (n.)




- 1781, from Afrikaans, from Dutch hertebeest "antelope," from hert "hart" (see hart) + beest "beast, ox" (in South African Dutch "steer, cattle"), from Middle Dutch beeste, from Old French beste "beast" (see beast).
- Maccabees




- late 14c., from Late Latin Maccabæus, surname given to Judas, third son of Mattathias the Hasmonean, leader of the religious revolt against Antiochus IV, 175-166 B.C.E. Usually connected with Hebrew maqqabh "hammer," but Klein thinks it an inexact transliteration of Hebrew matzbi "general, commander of an army." Related: Maccabean.
- wildebeest (n.)




- 1838, from South African Dutch (in modern Afrikaans wildebees, plural wildebeeste), literally "wild beast," from Dutch wild "wild" (see wild (adj.)) + beest "beast, ox" (in South African Dutch "steer, cattle"), from Middle Dutch beeste, from Old French beste "beast" (see beast).