allergyyoudaoicibaDictYouDict[allergy 词源字典]
allergy: [20] Allergy was borrowed from German allergie, which was coined in 1906 by the scientist C E von Pirquet. He formed it from Greek allos ‘other, different’ and érgon ‘work’ (source of English energy and related to English work). Its original application was to a changed physiological condition caused by an injection of some foreign substance.
=> energy, work[allergy etymology, allergy origin, 英语词源]
arrowrootyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
arrowroot: [17] Arrowroot, a tropical American plant with starchy tubers, gets its name by folk etymology, the process whereby an unfamiliar foreign word is reformulated along lines more accessible to the speakers of a language. In this case the word in question was aru-aru, the term used by the Arawak Indians of South America for the plant (meaning literally ‘meal of meals’). English-speakers adapted this to arrowroot because the root of the plant was used by the Indians to heal wounds caused by poisoned arrows.
assetyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
asset: [16] Originally, to have assets was simply to have ‘enough’ – as in French assez. The Anglo-Norman legal phrase aver asetz signified ‘have enough money to meet one’s debts’, and eventually asetz, later assets, passed from the general meaning ‘enough’ to the particular ‘financial resources’ (the final -s caused it to be regarded as a plural noun, but the analogical singular asset does not appear until the 19th century).

Anglo-Norman asetz itself goes back via Old French asez to Vulgar Latin *assatis, formed from the Latin phrase ad satis ‘to enough’ (satis is the source of English satisfy and satiate, and is related to sad).

=> sad, satiate, satisfy
cholerayoudaoicibaDictYouDict
cholera: [14] Greek kholéra originally meant ‘illness caused by choler, bilious attack’; it was a derivative of kholé ‘bile’ (which is related to English gall). Passing into Latin as cholera, it began to be used for ‘bile’ itself, both in the physiological sense and as representing one of the four ancient humours, ‘anger’. It had that sense when first adopted into English, and into French, where it became colère (source of English choler [14]).

It was revived as a term for a severe digestive disorder, involving vomiting, diarrhoea, etc, in the 17th century, and in the 19th century was applied (from the similarity of the symptoms) to the often fatal infectious disease caused by the bacterium Vibrio comma.

=> gall, melancholy
cobaltyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
cobalt: [17] German kobold means ‘goblin’: and in former times it was believed by German silver miners that impurities in the ore they were extracting, which lessened the value of the silver and even made them ill, were put there by these mischievous creatures. In fact these impurities were a silver-white metallic element, which was named kobalt after a Middle High German variant of kobold (the miners’ sickness was probably caused by the arsenic with which it occurred).
constituteyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
constitute: [15] Etymologically, that which is constituted is that which is ‘caused to stand’ or ‘set up’. The word comes from the past participle of Latin constituere ‘fix, establish’, a compound verb formed from the intensive prefix com- and statuere ‘set up’ (source of English statute). This was a derivative of Latin status (whence English state and status), which itself began life as the past participle of stāre ‘stand’ (a relative of English stand). The derivative constituent [17] comes (partly via French) from the Latin present participle constituēns.
=> stand, statue, status, statute
creviceyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
crevice: [14] Rather like crack, the word crevice began with the notion of the sharp noise of breaking and gradually developed to denote the fissure caused by such a break. It comes ultimately from the Latin verb crepāre ‘creak, rattle, crack’ (source of English crepitation [17] and decrepit, and probably also of craven), which passed into Old French as crever ‘burst, split’. From this was derived the noun crevace, borrowed into Middle English as crevace or crevisse. In modern French it developed into crevasse, which English reborrowed in the 19th century.
=> craven, crepitation, crevasse, decrepit
crustyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
crust: [14] Latin crusta meant ‘hard outer covering, shell’ (it is related to a number of words, including ultimately crystal, denoting a hard surface caused by freezing). Old French acquired it as crouste (the modern French form croûte formed the basis of croûton, borrowed into English in the early 19th century), and passed it on to Middle English as cruste. Crusta formed the basis of the modern Latin adjective crustāceus ‘having a shell’, applied in the early 19th century to the crustacea or crustaceans. And a custard was originally a kind of pie enclosed in a crust.
=> croûton, crystal, custard
crystalyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
crystal: [OE] The prehistoric Indo-European base *kru- produced several words denoting ‘hard outer surface’, including English crust, Old High German hrosa ‘crust’, and Old Norse hrúthr ‘crust’. In some cases they reflect a hardening caused by freezing: Old High German hrosa, for example, also meant ‘ice’, and Greek krúos meant ‘frost’.

From this was derived krustaímein ‘freeze’, which in turn formed the basis of krústallos ‘ice’. When Old English first acquired the word, via Latin crystallum and Old French cristal, it still meant ‘ice’, a sense which survived until the 16th century, although losing ground all the time to the metaphorical extension ‘clear mineral’.

=> crust
detrimentyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
detriment: [15] Etymologically, detriment denotes damage caused by ‘wearing away’. The word comes via Old French from Latin dētrīmentum, a derivative of dēterere ‘wear away’ (whose past participle is the source of English detritus [18]). This was a compound verb formed from the prefix - ‘away’ and terere ‘rub’ (from which English gets attrition and trite). The generalized metaphorical sense ‘harm’ had already developed in classical Latin.
=> attrition, detritus, trite
eclipseyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
eclipse: [13] From the point of view of the observer, an object which has been eclipsed has ‘gone away’ – is no longer there. And that in fact is the etymological foundation of the word. It comes, via Old French and Latin, from Greek ékleipsis, a derivative of ekleípein ‘no longer appear or be present’. This was a compound verb formed from the prefix ek- ‘out, away’ and leípein ‘leave’ (a distant relative of English leave).

Its adjectival derivative, ekleiptikós, passed into English as ecliptic [14], which was applied to the apparent path of the Sun relative to the stars because that is the line along which eclipses caused by the moon occur.

=> leave
emotionyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
emotion: [16] The semantic notion underlying emotion – of applying ‘physical movement’ metaphorically to ‘strong feeling’ – is an ancient one: Latin used the phrase mōtus animā, literally ‘movement of the spirit’, in this sense. Emotion itself is a post-classical Latin formation; it comes ultimately from Vulgar Latin *exmovēre, literally ‘move out’, hence ‘excite’, a compound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and movēre ‘move’ (source of English move).

In French this became émouvoir, and English borrowed its derived noun émotion, but at first used it only in the literal sense ‘moving, agitation’ (‘The waters continuing in the caverns … caused the emotion or earthquake’, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society 1758) and the metaphorically extended ‘political agitation or disturbance’ (a sense now preserved only in émeute [19], another derivative of French émouvoir).

It was not until the late 17th century that the sense ‘strong feeling’ really came to the fore. The back-formation emote is a 20th-century phenomenon, of US origin.

=> émeute, move
exquisiteyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
exquisite: [15] Etymologically, exquisite means ‘sought out’. It comes from the past participle of Latin exquīrere, a compound formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and quaerere ‘search’ (source of English query, quest, and question). Already in Latin it had acquired the metaphorical sense ‘sought after, choice, excellent’, which it brought with it into English.

From the 15th to the 18th centuries, however, the adjective underwent something of an explosion (being used in such widely varied senses as ‘ingenious, far-fetched’, ‘abstruse’, ‘affected’, ‘careful’, ‘elaborate’, and even – in relation to diseases – ‘true, typical’: ‘an exquisite diabetes caused by attraction of urine’, translation of Théophile Bonet’s Mercurius Compitalitius 1684) before settling back into the now familiar ‘excellent in beauty’.

=> query, quest, question
goutyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
gout: [13] Latin gutta meant literally ‘drop’ (the spelling of gutta in English gutta percha [19] shows its influence, although in fact the term originated in Malay getah percha ‘gum tree’). It was applied metaphorically to various diseases ascribed to the precipitation of fluids from one part of the body to another, among them pain in the joints which was supposed to be caused by poisonous material deposited from the blood (not far wide of the mark, for the condition now known as gout is due to the accumulation of uricacid products in the joints). English acquired the word via Old French goute.
=> gutter
gremlinyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
gremlin: [20] Gremlin originated as Royal Air Force slang, as the name of a mischievous imp that caused malfunctions and crashes. It is first recorded in 1941, but it is said to go back to the early 1920s. It is generally assumed that its latter part comes from goblin, but speculation has been rife and diverse as to the source of its first syllable: from the scholarly (Old English gremman ‘make angry’) to the inventively popular (a blend of goblin with Fremlin, the name of a well-known firm of brewers).
griefyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
grief: [13] ‘Oppressiveness’ is the link between modern English grief and Latin gravis (source of English gravity). The Latin adjective meant ‘heavy, weighty’, and it formed the basis of a verb gravāre ‘weigh upon, oppress’. This passed into Old French as grever ‘cause to suffer, harrass’ (source of English grieve [13]), from which was derived the noun grief or gref ‘suffering, hardship’. Its modern sense, ‘feeling caused by such trouble or hardship, sorrow’, developed in the 14th century.
=> grave, gravity, grieve
homeopathyyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
homeopathy: [19] Greek hómoios meant ‘like, similar’. It was derived from homós ‘same’, a word ultimately related to English same which has contributed homogeneous [17], homonym [17], homophone [17], and homosexual [19] to the English language. Combined with -pátheia, a derivative of Greek páthos ‘passion, suffering’, it produced German homöopathie, which was borrowed by English around 1830. Etymologically, the word means ‘cure by similarity’ – that is, by administering minute quantities of the same substance as caused the disease – and contrasts with allopathy [19], based on Greek állos ‘other’.
=> same
iconyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
icon: [16] The etymological idea underlying icon is of ‘similarity’. It comes via Latin īcōn from Greek eikón, which was derived from a prehistoric base meaning ‘be like’. From ‘likeness, similarity’, eikón progressed semantically via ‘image’ to ‘portrait, picture’. That was the general sense in which English acquired the word (‘The Icon, or forme of the same birde, I have caused thus to bee figured’, John Bossewell, Workes of Armorie 1572), and it was not until the early 19th century that the particular application to a ‘sacred portrait in the Eastern Orthodox church’ entered the language.
kangarooyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
kangaroo: [18] The first English speakers to refer in writing to the kangaroo were Captain Cook and the botanist Joseph Banks, who both mentioned it in 1770 in the journals they kept of their visit to Australia (Banks, for instance, referred to killing ‘kangaru’). This was their interpretation of ganjurru, the name for a large black or grey type of kangaroo in the Guugu Yimidhirr language of New South Wales.

English quickly generalized the term to any sort of kangaroo, although it caused some confusion among speakers of other Australian Aboriginal languages, who were not familiar with it: speakers of the Baagandji language, for instance, used it to refer to the horse (which had just been introduced into Australia). There is no truth whatsoever in the story that the Aboriginal word was a reply to the English question ‘What’s that?’, and meant ‘I don’t understand’.

The element -roo was used in the 19th century to produce jackeroo, which denoted ‘a new immigrant in Australia’, and is first recorded as an independent abbreviation of kangaroo in the first decade of the 20th century. The term kangaroo court ‘unofficial court’, which dates from the 1850s, is an allusion to the court’s irregular proceedings, which supposedly resemble the jumps of a kangaroo.

lavatoryyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
lavatory: [14] The notion of ‘washing’ was represented in prehistoric Indo-European by *lou-, which produced Greek loúein ‘wash’, English lather, and Latin lavāre ‘wash’. This last has been a fruitful source of English words, not all of them as obvious as lavatory, which originally meant simply ‘place or vessel for washing’ (its use for a ‘room containing a water closet’ appears to date from the 19th century).

Among its relatives are deluge [14], latrine [17] (from a contraction of Latin lavātrīna), laundry, lava [18] (from Italian lava, which originally denoted a ‘stream caused by sudden rain’), lavish [15] (from the metaphorical notion of an ‘outpouring’), and lotion [14]. And from Latin luere, the form taken on by lavāre after prefixes, we get ablution [14] and dilute [16]. Lavender [15] looks as though it should belong to the same family, but no actual connection has ever been demonstrated.

=> ablution, deluge, dilute, lather, latrine, laundry, lava, lavish, lotion
lunaryoudaoicibaDictYouDict
lunar: [17] Latin lūna ‘moon’ came from an Indo- European base which also produced English light (not to mention a range of Latin ‘light’- words, such as lūx and lūmen, which have given English illustrate, lucid, luminous, lustre, etc). It had two adjectival derivatives: lūnāris, which simply meant ‘of the moon’, and was borrowed by English as lunar; and lūnāticus.

This was originally used for ‘living on the moon’, but subsequently came to employed in the sense ‘crazy’, from the notion that certain sorts of periodic madness were caused by the phases of the moon. English acquired it via Old French lunatique as lunatic [13].

=> illustrate, light, luminous, lunatic, lustre
malariayoudaoicibaDictYouDict
malaria: [18] The original English term for an ‘attack of malarial fever’ was ague. The word malaria did not come on the scene until the mid- 18th century. It was borrowed from Italian mal’aria, a conflation of mala aria, literally ‘bad air’. This was an allusion to the former belief that malaria was caused by foul air, and particularly by vapours given off by swamps.
=> air, malign
mumpsyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
mumps: [16] The dialect noun mump meant ‘grimace’; and the use of its plural mumps for the disease is thought to have been originally an allusion to the distorted expression caused by the swollen neck glands. Mump itself is presumably related to the verb mump ‘sulk’ [16], and belongs to a family of words (including also mumble [14]) based on the syllable mum, representing an ‘indistinct sound made through closed lips’ (mum ‘silent’ [14] itself, as in ‘keep mum’, comes from this source, as does mummer [15], originally ‘mime actor’).
=> mum, mumble, mummer
nightmareyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
nightmare: [13] The mare of nightmare is not the same word as mare ‘female horse’. It comes from Old English mære, which denoted a sort of evil spirit or goblin which sat on sleepers’ chests and gave them bad dreams. That is what the compound nightmare meant too when it emerged in the early Middle English period, and the metaphorical application to the bad dream supposedly caused by this incubus is not recorded until the mid-16th century.
=> yell
panicyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
panic: [17] Panic is etymologically ‘terror caused by the god Pan’. The ancient Greeks believed that he lurked in lonely spots, and would frighten people by suddenly appearing, or making noises. He was evidently invoked to account for alarming but harmless natural phenomena, and so the element of ‘irrationality’ in the English word was present from the beginning. English acquired it (originally as an adjective) via French panique and modern Latin pānicus from Greek pānikós ‘of Pan’.
=> pan
rankleyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
rankle: [14] Etymologically, if something rankles, it festers from the effects of a ‘dragon’s’ bite. Nowadays the word is only used metaphorically, but it originally meant literally ‘be sore, fester’. It was borrowed from Old French rancler, a variant of draoncler. This was derived from draoncle ‘ulcer’, which in turn came from dranculus, the medieval Latin descendant of dracunculus, a diminutive form of Latin dracō ‘snake’ (source of English dragon). The notion underlying the word is of an ulcer caused by the bite of a snake.
=> dragon
rheumaticyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
rheumatic: [14] Greek rheuma meant literally ‘flow, stream’ (it came ultimately from the same Indo-European base as produced English stream, and was a close relative of the Greek verb rhein ‘flow’, which provides the second halves of English catarrh and diarrhoea). It was used for a ‘watery discharge from the body’, and was borrowed into English (via late Latin rheuma and Old French reume) as rheum [14] in the sense ‘mucous discharge from the eyes or nose’.

Pains in the joints were in former times thought to be caused by watery secretions within the body, and so towards the end of the 17th century the term rheumatism was applied to them.

=> catarrh, diarrhoea, rhyme, rhythm
sardonicyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
sardonic: [17] The Greek word for ‘scornful, mocking’ was sardánios, but this came to be changed to sardónios, which literally meant ‘Sardinian’, through association with the Latin term herba Sardonia ‘Sardinian plant’, the name of a sort of plant which when eaten caused facial contortions that resembled a scornful grin. English acquired the word via Latin sardonius and French sardonique. The sardine [15] probably gets its name from Sardinia too.
=> sardine
stitchyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
stitch: [OE] Stitch was originally a noun, meaning ‘sting, prick’ (a sense which survives in the very specialized application to a ‘pain in the side, caused by exertion’). It came from a prehistoric Germanic *stikiz, which was formed from the base *stik- ‘pierce, prick’ (source also of English stick). Its use as a verb, denoting ‘join with thread by piercing with a needle’, emerged at the beginning of the 13th century, and the sewing sense fed back into the noun.
=> stick
tsunamiyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
tsunami: [19] Japanese tsunami means literally ‘harbour waves’, a reference to the devastating effect Pacific tsunamis have had on Japanese coastal communities. For most of the 20th century the term was largely restricted to the specialized vocabulary of oceanographers and earth scientists, lay people preferring the more familiar tidal wave (a misnomer: strictly speaking, a tidal wave is one caused by the movement of the tide, whereas a tsunami is specifically generated by an undersea earthquake), but the disastrous inundation of southern Asian coasts at the end of 2004 lodged it firmly in the language’s everyday lexicon.
warbleyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
warble: [14] The etymological notion underlying the word warble is of ‘whirling around’; its application to sounds, originally in the sense ‘whirl of notes, trill’, is a secondary development. It was borrowed from Old Northern French werbler, a derivative of the noun werble ‘trill, melody’. And this in turn came from Frankish *hwirbilōn ‘whirl, trill’, which is distantly related to English whirl. (Warble ‘swelling on an animal’s back caused by insect larva’ [16] is a completely different word. It may have been borrowed from the now obsolete Swedish compound varbulde, literally ‘pustumour’, or a related Scandinavian word.)
accusative (n.)youdaoicibaDictYouDict
grammatical case whose primary function is to express destination or goal of motion, mid-15c., from Anglo-French accusatif, Old French acusatif, or directly from Latin (casus) accusativus "(case) of accusing," from accusatus, past participle of accusare (see accuse).

Translating Greek ptosis aitiatike "case of that which is caused," on similarity of Greek aitiasthai "accuse." Greek aitia is the root of both, and means both "cause" and "accusation," hence the confusion of the Romans. A more correct translation would have been casus causativus. Typically the case of the direct object, but also sometimes denoting "motion towards." Nouns and adjectives in French, Spanish, and Italian, languages from which English has borrowed heavily, generally were formed from the accusative case of a Latin word.
alchemy (n.)youdaoicibaDictYouDict
mid-14c., from Old French alchimie (14c.), alquemie (13c.), from Medieval Latin alkimia, from Arabic al-kimiya, from Greek khemeioa (found c.300 C.E. in a decree of Diocletian against "the old writings of the Egyptians"), all meaning "alchemy." Perhaps from an old name for Egypt (Khemia, literally "land of black earth," found in Plutarch), or from Greek khymatos "that which is poured out," from khein "to pour," related to khymos "juice, sap" [Klein, citing W. Muss-Arnolt, calls this folk etymology]. The word seems to have elements of both origins.
Mahn ... concludes, after an elaborate investigation, that Gr. khymeia was probably the original, being first applied to pharmaceutical chemistry, which was chiefly concerned with juices or infusions of plants; that the pursuits of the Alexandrian alchemists were a subsequent development of chemical study, and that the notoriety of these may have caused the name of the art to be popularly associated with the ancient name of Egypt. [OED]
The al- is the Arabic definite article, "the." The art and the name were adopted by the Arabs from Alexandrians and thence returned to Europe via Spain. Alchemy was the "chemistry" of the Middle Ages and early modern times; since c. 1600 the word has been applied distinctively to the pursuit of the transmutation of baser metals into gold, which, along with the search for the universal solvent and the panacea, were the chief occupations of early chemistry.
alcoholic (adj.)youdaoicibaDictYouDict
1790, "of or pertaining to alcohol;" see alcohol + -ic. Meaning "caused by drunkenness" is attested by 1872; meaning "habitually drunk" by 1910. Noun sense of "one who is addicted to drinking in excess, chronic drunkard, old rounder" is recorded from 1891; earlier alcoholist (1888). Alcoholics Anonymous founded 1935 in Akron, Ohio, U.S. Alky is first recorded 1844 as a slang shortening of "alcoholic liquor;" 1960 in the sense of "a drunkard."
apoplexy (n.)youdaoicibaDictYouDict
late 14c., "sudden fit of paralysis and dizziness," from Old French apoplexie or directly from Late Latin apoplexia, from Greek apoplexia, from apoplessein "to strike down and incapacitate," from apo- "off" (see apo-), in this case probably an intensive prefix, + plessein "hit" (cognates: plague (n.), also with a root sense of "stricken"). The Latin translation, sideratio, means "disease caused by a constellation."
AryanyoudaoicibaDictYouDict
c. 1600, as a term in classical history, from Latin Arianus, Ariana, from Greek Aria, Areia, names applied in classical times to the eastern part of ancient Persia and to its inhabitants. Ancient Persians used the name in reference to themselves (Old Persian ariya-), hence Iran. Ultimately from Sanskrit arya- "compatriot;" in later language "noble, of good family."

Also the name Sanskrit-speaking invaders of India gave themselves in the ancient texts, from which early 19c. European philologists (Friedrich Schlegel, 1819, who linked the word with German Ehre "honor") applied it to the ancient people we now call Indo-Europeans (suspecting that this is what they called themselves); this use is attested in English from 1851. The term fell into the hands of racists, and in German from 1845 it was specifically contrasted to Semitic (Lassen).

German philologist Max Müller (1823-1900) popularized the term in his writings on comparative linguistics, recommending it as the name (replacing Indo-European, Indo-Germanic, Caucasian, Jshortened) for the group of related, inflected languages connected with these peoples, mostly found in Europe but also including Sanskrit and Persian. Arian was used in this sense from 1839 (and is more philologically correct), but this spelling caused confusion with Arian, the term in ecclesiastical history.

Gradually replaced in comparative linguistics c. 1900 by Indo-European, except when used to distinguish Indo-European languages of India from non-Indo-European ones. Used in Nazi ideology to mean "member of a Caucasian Gentile race of Nordic type." As an ethnic designation, however, it is properly limited to Indo-Iranians (most justly to the latter) and has fallen from general academic use since the Nazi era.
astrobleme (n.)youdaoicibaDictYouDict
1961, from astro- + Greek bleme "throw of a missile; wound caused by a missile," from ballein "to throw" (see ballistics).
bed-sore (n.)youdaoicibaDictYouDict
"gangrene caused by anemia due to continued pressure," 1833, from bed (n.) + sore (n.)
brucellosis (n.)youdaoicibaDictYouDict
1930, Modern Latin, named for Scottish physician Sir David Bruce (1855-1931), who discovered the bacteria that caused it (1887).
bump (n.)youdaoicibaDictYouDict
1590s, "protuberance caused by a blow;" 1610s as "a dull, solid blow;" see bump (v.). The dancer's bump and grind attested from 1940.
butterfly (n.)youdaoicibaDictYouDict
Old English buttorfleoge, evidently butter (n.) + fly (n.), but of obscure signification. Perhaps based on the old notion that the insects (or witches disguised as butterflies) consume butter or milk that is left uncovered. Or, less creatively, simply because the pale yellow color of many species' wings suggests the color of butter. Another theory connects it to the color of the insect's excrement, based on Dutch cognate boterschijte. An overview of words for "butterfly" in various languages can be found here. Also see papillon.

Applied to persons from c. 1600, originally in reference to vain and gaudy attire; by 1806 in reference to transformation from early lowly state; in reference to flitting tendencies by 1873. The swimming stroke so called from 1936. Butterflies "light stomach spasms caused by anxiety" is from 1908.
The butterfly effect is a deceptively simple insight extracted from a complex modern field. As a low-profile assistant professor in MIT's department of meteorology in 1961, [Edward] Lorenz created an early computer program to simulate weather. One day he changed one of a dozen numbers representing atmospheric conditions, from .506127 to .506. That tiny alteration utterly transformed his long-term forecast, a point Lorenz amplified in his 1972 paper, "Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?" [Peter Dizikes, "The Meaning of the Butterfly," The Boston Globe, June 8, 2008]
catalysis (n.)youdaoicibaDictYouDict
1650s, "dissolution," from Latinized form of Greek katalysis "dissolution, a dissolving" (of governments, military units, etc.), from katalyein "to dissolve," from kata- "down" (or "completely"), see cata-, + lyein "to loosen" (see lose). Chemical sense "change caused by an agent which itself remains unchanged" is attested from 1836, introduced by Swedish chemist Jöns Jakob Berzelius (1779-1848).
cause (v.)youdaoicibaDictYouDict
late 14c., "produce an effect," also "impel, compel," from Old French causer "to cause" (13c.) and directly from Medieval Latin causare, from Latin causa "a cause; a reason; interest; judicial process, lawsuit," which is of unknown origin. Related: Caused; causing. Classical Latin causari meant "to plead, to debate a question."
chip (n.2)youdaoicibaDictYouDict
"break caused by chipping," 1889, from chip (v.).
cholera (n.)youdaoicibaDictYouDict
late 14c., "bile, melancholy" (originally the same as choler), from Middle French cholera or directly from Late Latin cholera, from Greek kholera "a type of disease characterized by diarrhea, supposedly caused by choler" (Celsus), from khole "gall, bile," from khloazein "to be green," from khloros (see Chloe). But another sense of khole was "drainpipe, gutter."

Revived 1560s in classical sense as a name for a severe digestive disorder (rarely fatal to adults); and 1704 (especially as cholera morbus), for a highly lethal disease endemic in India, periodically breaking out in global epidemics, especially that reaching Britain and America in the early 1830s.
cigarette (n.)youdaoicibaDictYouDict
1835, American English, from French cigarette (by 1824), diminutive of cigare "cigar" (18c.), from Spanish cigarro (see cigar). Spanish form cigarito, cigarita also was popular in English mid-19c. Cigarette heart "heart disease caused by smoking" is attested from 1884. Cigarette lighter attested from 1884.
cold (n.)youdaoicibaDictYouDict
c. 1300, "coldness," from cold (adj.). Sense in common cold is 1530s, from symptoms resembling those of exposure to cold; compare earlier senses "indisposition caused by exposure to cold" (early 14c.); "discomfort caused by cold" (c. 1300).
cretin (n.)youdaoicibaDictYouDict
1779, from French crétin (18c.), from Alpine dialect crestin, "a dwarfed and deformed idiot" of a type formerly found in families in the Alpine lands, a condition caused by a congenital deficiency of thyroid hormones, from Vulgar Latin *christianus "a Christian," a generic term for "anyone," but often with a sense of "poor fellow." Related: Cretinism (1801).
damage (n.)youdaoicibaDictYouDict
late 13c., from Old French damage (12c., Modern French dommage) "loss caused by injury," from dam "damage," from Latin damnum "loss, hurt, damage" (see damn).
darnel (n.)youdaoicibaDictYouDict
weed growing in grainfields, c. 1300, from northern dialectal French darnelle; according to one theory, the the second element is Old French neelle (Modern French nielle) "cockle," from Vulgar Latin nigella "black-seeded," from fem. of Latin nigellus "blackish."

But perhaps rather the word is related to Middle Dutch verdaernt, verdarnt "stunned, dumbfounded, angry," Walloon darne, derne "stunned, dazed, drunk," the plant so called from its well-known inebriating property. Long noted for its "poisonous" properties (actually caused by fungus growing on the plant); The French word for it is ivraie, from Latin ebriacus "intoxicated," and the botanical name, Lolium temulentum, is from Latin temulent "drunken," though this sometimes is said to be "from the heavy seed heads lolling over under their own weight."
In some parts of continental Europe it appears the seeds of darnel have the reputation of causing intoxication in men, beasts, and birds, the effects being sometimes so violent as to produce convulsions. In Scotland the name of Sleepies, is applied to darnel, from the seeds causing narcotic effects. [Gouverneur Emerson, "The American Farmer's Encyclopedia," New York, 1860. It also mentions that "Haller speaks of them as communicating these properties to beer."]