quword 趣词
Word Origins Dictionary
- donnybrook (n.)




- 1852, from Donnybrook Fair, proverbial for carousing and brawling, held in County Dublin until 1855.
- night (n.)




- Old English niht (West Saxon neaht, Anglian næht, neht) "night, darkness;" the vowel indicating that the modern word derives from oblique cases (genitive nihte, dative niht), from Proto-Germanic *nakht- (cognates: Old Saxon and Old High German naht, Old Frisian and Dutch nacht, German Nacht, Old Norse natt, Gothic nahts).
The Germanic words are from PIE *nekwt- "night" (cognates: Greek nuks "a night," Latin nox, Old Irish nochd, Sanskrit naktam "at night," Lithuanian naktis "night," Old Church Slavonic nosti, Russian noch', Welsh henoid "tonight"), according to Watkins, probably from a verbal root *neg- "to be dark, be night." For spelling with -gh- see fight.The fact that the Aryans have a common name for night, but not for day (q.v.), is due to the fact that they reckoned by nights. [Weekley]
Compare German Weihnachten "Christmas." In early times, the day was held to begin at sunset, so Old English monanniht "Monday night" was the night before Monday, or what we would call Sunday night. The Greeks, by contrast, counted their days by mornings.
To work nights preserves the Old English genitive of time. Night shift is attested from 1710 in the sense of "garment worn by a woman at night" (see shift (n.1)); meaning "gang of workers employed after dark" is from 1839. Night soil "excrement" (1770) is so called because it was removed (from cesspools, etc.) after dark. Night train attested from 1838. Night life "habitual nocturnal carousing" attested from 1852. - Trojan (adj.)




- Old English Troian "of or pertaining to ancient Troy," from Latin Trojanus, from Troia, Troja "Troy," from the Greek name for the city, said to be from Tros, name of a king of Phrygia, the mythical founder of Troy. Trojan horse was figurative of ambush-from-within in Roman times (equus Troianus); attested in English from 1570s; the computer virus sense is attested by 1982.
As a noun from mid-14c., "inhabitant of ancient Troy;" in early modern English, the noun could mean "a determined fellow, one who fights or works hard," from the Trojans' long resistance to the Greeks in the Trojan War, but also in 17c., it was a colloquial term for "person of dissolute life, carousing companion." The trade name for a brand of prophylactic contraceptive was registered 1927 in U.S.