quword 趣词
Word Origins Dictionary
- feather
- feather: [OE] The concept of ‘feathers’ is closely bound up with those of ‘wings’ and ‘flying’, and not surprisingly feather belongs to a word family in which all three of these meanings are represented. Its ultimate source is the prehistoric Indo-European base *pet-, which also produced Greek ptéron ‘wing’ (as in English pterodactyl), Latin penna ‘feather, wing’ (source of English pen), and Sanskrit pátati ‘fly’. Its Germanic descendant was *fethrō, from which came German feder, Dutch veer, Swedish fjäder and English feather (itself used in the plural for ‘wings’ in Anglo-Saxon times).
=> pen, pterodactyl - mathematics
- mathematics: [16] Etymologically, mathematics means ‘something learned’. Its ultimate source was the Greek verb manthánein ‘learn’, which came from the same Indo- European base (*men-, *mon-, *mn- ‘think’) as produced English memory and mind. Its stem form math- served as a basis of a noun máthēma ‘science’, whose derived adjective mathēmatikós passed via Latin mathēmaticus and Old French mathematique into English as mathematic, now superseded by the contemporary mathematical [16]. Mathematics probably comes from French les mathématiques, a rendering of the Latin plural noun mathēmatica.
From earliest times the notion of ‘science’ was bound up with that of ‘numerical reasoning’, and when mathematics reached English it was still being used for various scientific disciplines that involved geometrical calculation, such as astronomy and physics, but gradually over the centuries it has been narrowed down to a cover term for the abstract numerical sciences such as arithmetic, algebra, and geometry.
The abbreviated form maths dates from the early 20th century, the preferred American form math from the late 19th century. The original meaning of the word’s Greek ancestor is preserved in English polymath ‘person of wide learning’ [17].
=> memory, mind, polymath - faggot (n.1)
- late 13c., "bundle of twigs bound up," also fagald, faggald, from Old French fagot "bundle of sticks" (13c.), of uncertain origin, probably from Italian faggotto "bundle of sticks," diminutive of Vulgar Latin *facus, from Latin fascis "bundle of wood" (see fasces).
Especially used for burning heretics (emblematic of this from 1550s), so that phrase fire and faggot was used to indicate "punishment of a heretic." Heretics who recanted were required to wear an embroidered figure of a faggot on the sleeve as an emblem and reminder of what they deserved.