英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

acre [acre 词源字典]: acre: [OE] Acre is a word of ancient ancestry, going back probably to the Indo-European base *ag-, source of words such as agent and act. This base had a range of meanings covering ‘do’ and ‘drive’, and it is possible that the notion of driving contributed to the concept of driving animals on to land for pasture. However that may be, it gave rise to a group of words in Indo- European languages, including Latin ager (whence English agriculture), Greek agros, Sanskrit ájras, and a hypothetical Germanic *akraz.

By this time, people’s agricultural activities had moved on from herding animals in open country to tilling the soil in enclosed areas, and all of this group of words meant specifically ‘field’. From the Germanic form developed Old English æcer, which as early as 1000 AD had come to be used for referring to a particular measured area of agricultural land (as much as a pair of oxen could plough in one day).
=> act, agent, agriculture, eyrie, onager, peregrine, pilgrim[acre etymology, acre origin, 英语词源]
adjourn: adjourn: [14] Adjourn originally meant ‘appoint a day for’, but over the centuries, such is human nature, it has come to be used for postponing, deferring, or suspending. It originated in the Old French phrase à jour nomé ‘to an appointed day’, from which the Old French verb ajourner derived. Jour ‘day’ came from late Latin diurnum, a noun formed from the adjective diurnus ‘daily’, which in turn was based on the noun diēs ‘day’.
=> diary, journal
alms: alms: [OE] The word alms has become much reduced in its passage through time from its ultimate Greek source, eleēmosúnē ‘pity, alms’. This was borrowed into post-classical (Christian) Latin as eleēmosyna, which subsequently became simplified in Vulgar Latin to *alimosina (source of the word for ‘alms’ in many Romance languages, such as French aumône and Italian limosina).

At this stage Germanic borrowed it, and in due course dispersed it (German almosen, Dutch aalmoes). It entered Old English as ælmesse, which became reduced in Middle English to almes and finally by the 17th century to alms (which because of its -s had come to be regarded as a plural noun). The original Greek eleēmosúnē is itself a derivative, of the adjective eleémōn ‘compassionate’, which in turn came from the noun éleos ‘pity’.

From medieval Latin eleēmosyna was derived the adjective eleēmosynarius (borrowed into English in the 17th century as the almost unpronounceable eleemosynary ‘giving alms’). Used as a noun, this passed into Old French as a(u)lmonier, and eventually, in the 13th century, became English aumoner ‘giver of alms’. The modern sense of almoner as a hospital social worker did not develop until the end of the 19th century.
=> almoner, eleemosynary
antipodes: antipodes: [16] Greek antípodes meant literally ‘people who have their feet opposite’ – that is, people who live on the other side of the world, and therefore have the soles of their feet ‘facing’ those of people on this side of the world. It was formed from the prefix anti- ‘against, opposite’ and poús ‘foot’ (related to English foot and pedal). English antipodes, borrowed via either French antipodes or late Latin antipodes, originally meant ‘people on the other side of the world’ too, but by the mid 16th century it had come to be used simply for the ‘opposite side of the globe’.
=> foot, pedal
arrive: arrive: [13] When speakers of early Middle English ‘arrived’, what they were literally doing was coming to shore after a voyage. For arrive was originally a Vulgar Latin compound verb based on the Latin noun rīpa ‘shore, river bank’ (as in the English technical term riparian ‘of a river bank’; and river comes from the same source). From the phrase ad rīpam ‘to the shore’ came the verb *arripāre ‘come to land’, which passed into English via Old French ariver. It does not seem to have been until the early 14th century that the more general sense of ‘reaching a destination’ started to establish itself in English.
=> riparian, river
average: average: [15] The word average has a devious history. It began in Arabic, as ‘awārīya, the plural of ‘awār, a noun derived from the verb ‘āra ‘mutilate’; this was used as a commercial term, denoting ‘damaged merchandise’. The first European language to adopt it was Italian, as avaria, and it passed via Old French avarie into English (where in the 16th century it acquired its -age ending, probably by association with the then semantically similar damage).

Already by this time it had come to signify the ‘financial loss incurred through damage to goods in transit’, and this passed in the 17th century to the ‘equal sharing of such loss by those with a financial interest in the goods’, and eventually, in the 18th century, to the current (mathematical and general) sense of ‘mean’.
barnacle: barnacle: [12] The term barnacle was originally applied to a type of goose, Branta leucopsis, which according to medieval legend grew on trees or on logs of wood. Various fanciful versions of its reproductive cycle existed, among them that it emerged from a fruit or that it grew attached to a tree by its beak, but the most tenacious was that it developed inside small shellfish attached to wood, rocks, etc by the seashore.

Hence by the end of the 16th century the term had come to be applied to these shellfish, and today that is its main sense. The word was originally bernak (it gained its -le ending in the 15th century) and came from medieval Latin bernaca, but its ultimate source is unknown.
beach: beach: [16] Beach is a mystery word. When it first turns up, in the dialect of the southeast corner of England, it means ‘shingle’; and since long stretches of the seashore in Sussex and Kent are pebbly, it is a natural extension that the word for ‘shingle’ should come to be used for ‘shore’. Its ultimate source is obscure, but some etymologists have suggested a connection with Old English bæce or bece ‘stream’ (a relative of English beck [14]), on the grounds that the new meaning could have developed from the notion of the ‘pebbly bed of a stream’.
=> beck
become: become: [OE] Become is a compound verb found in other Germanic languages (German bekommen, for instance, and Dutch bekomen), which points to a prehistoric Germanic source *bikweman, based on *kweman, source of English come. Originally it meant simply ‘come, arrive’, but the modern senses ‘come to be’ and ‘be suitable’ had developed by the 12th century. A parallel semantic development occurred in French: Latin dēvenīre meant ‘come’, but its modern French descendant devenir means ‘become’.
=> come
bough: bough: [OE] Bough is a word of some antiquity, dispersed far and wide throughout the Indo- European languages, but it is only in English that it has come to mean ‘branch’. It comes ultimately from an Indo-European *bhāghūs; the meaning this had is not altogether clear, but many of its descendants, such as Greek pakhus and Sanskrit bāhús, centre semantically round ‘arm’ or ‘forearm’ (a meaning element which can be discerned in the possibly related bosom).

Germanic adopted the Indo-European form as *bōgus, with apparently a shift in signification up the arms towards the shoulders (Old English bōg, bōh, Old Norse bógr, and Middle Dutch boech all meant ‘shoulder’, and the Dutch word later came to be applied to the front of a ship – possibly the source of English bow).
=> bosom, bow
brook: brook: [OE] There are two distinct words brook in English. The one meaning ‘stream’ is comparatively isolated; it apparently has relatives in other Germanic languages (such as German bruch), but they mean ‘swamp’, and there the story ends. The now rather archaic verb brook, however, meaning ‘stand for, tolerate’, can be traced right back to an Indo-European base *bhrug-, from which English also gets fruit and frugal.

Its Germanic descendant was *brūk- ‘use’, which has given rise to a range of current verbs in the Germanic languages, including German brauchen ‘use, need’. The Old English version was brūcan, which also meant ‘use’. A particular application to food (‘use’ in the sense ‘eat’, and later ‘be able to digest’) started to develop in the late Old English period, and by the 16th century this had come to be used more generally (rather like stomach) for ‘tolerate’.
=> frugal, fruit
buckle: buckle: [14] English acquired buckle via Old French boucla from Latin buccula ‘cheek strap of a helmet’. This was a diminutive form of Latin bucca ‘cheek’ (source of French bouche ‘mouth’), which gave English the anatomical term buccal ‘of the cheeks’ [19], and some have speculated is related to English pock. The notion of ‘fastening’ implicit in the Latin word carried through into English.

As well as ‘cheek strap’, Latin buccula meant ‘boss in the middle of a shield’. Old French boucle adopted this sense too, and created the derivative boucler, originally an adjective, meaning (of a shield) ‘having a central boss’. English borrowed this as buckler ‘small round shield’ [13]. The verb buckle was created from the English noun in the late 14th century, but the sense ‘distort’, which developed in the 16th century, comes from French boucler, which had come to mean ‘curl, bulge’.

Also from the French verb is bouclé ‘yarn with irregular loops’ [19].
=> bouclé, buckler
bungalow: bungalow: [17] Etymologically, bungalow means simply ‘Bengali’. Banglā is the Hind word for ‘of Bengal’ (as in Bangladesh), and English borrowed it (probably in the Gujarati version bangalo) in the sense ‘house in the Bengal style’. Originally this signified any simple, lightly-built, usually temporary structure, which by definition had only one storey, but it is the one-storeyedness that has come to be the identifying characteristic.
cachet: cachet: [17] Cachet was a Scottish borrowing of a French word which originally meant ‘seal affixed to a letter or document’. In the 19th century this developed into the figurative ‘personal stamp, distinguishing characteristic’, which, through its use in the context of distinguished or fashionable people or things, has come to mean ‘prestige’. The original notion contained in the word is of ‘pressing’.

It comes via the medieval French verb cacher ‘press’ from Latin coactāre ‘constrain’. This was a derivative of coact-, the past participial stem of cōgere ‘drive together’ (source of English cogent), a compound verb formed from con- ‘together’ and agere ‘drive’ (source of English act and a host of other derivatives from agent to prodigal).

Modern French cacher means ‘hide’, which is the source of cache ‘hoard’, borrowed by English in the 19th century.
=> cache, cogent
campaign: campaign: [17] Ultimately, campaign and champagne are the same word. Both go back to late Latin campānia, a derivative of Latin campus ‘open field’ (source of English camp). This passed into Old French as champagne and into Italian as campagna ‘open country’, and both words have subsequently come to be used as the designation of regions in France and Italy (whence English champagne [17], wine made in the Champagne area of eastern France).

The French word was also borrowed into English much earlier, as the now archaic champaign ‘open country’ [14]. Meanwhile, in Italian a particular military application of campagna had arisen: armies disliked fighting in winter because of the bad weather, so they stayed in camp, not emerging to do battle in the open countryside (the campagna) until summer. Hence campagna came to mean ‘military operations’; it was borrowed in to French as campagne, and thence into English.
=> camp, champagne
can: can: [OE] English has two distinct words can. The verb ‘be able to’ goes back via Old English cunnan and Germanic *kunnan to an Indo- European base *gn-, which also produced know. The underlying etymological meaning of can is thus ‘know’ or more specifically ‘come to know’, which survived in English until comparatively recently (in Ben Jonson’s The Magnetick Lady 1632, for example, we find ‘She could the Bible in the holy tongue’).

This developed into ‘know how to do something’, from which we get the current ‘be able to do something’. The past tense could comes ultimately from prehistoric Germanic *kuntha, via Old English cūthe (related to English uncouth) and late Middle English coude; the l is a 16th-century intrusion, based on the model of should and would. (Canny [16] is probably a derivative of the verb can, mirroring a much earlier but parallel formation cunning.) Can ‘container’ appears to come from a prehistoric Germanic *kannōn-.
=> canny, cunning, ken, know, uncouth
cavalcade: cavalcade: [16] Originally, a cavalcade was simply a ride on horseback, often for the purpose of attack: in James I’s Counterblast to tobacco 1604, for example, we find ‘to make some sudden cavalcade upon your enemies’. By the 17th century this had developed to ‘procession on horseback’, and it was not long after that that the present-day, more general ‘procession’ emerged.

The word comes via French cavalcade from Italian cavalcata, a derivative of the verb cavalcare ‘ride on horseback’. This in turn came from Vulgar Latin *caballicāre, which was based on Latin caballus ‘horse’ (source also of English cavalier and French cheval ‘horse’). In the 20th century, -cade has come to be regarded as a suffix in its own right, meaning ‘procession, show’, and producing such forms as motorcade, aquacade, and even camelcade.
=> cavalier
chock-full: chock-full: [14] There is more than one theory to account for this word. It occurs in a couple of isolated instances around 1400, as chokkefulle and chekeful, prompting speculation that the first element may be either chock ‘wooden block’, which came from an assumed Old Northern French *choque (thus ‘stuffed full with lumps of wood’) or cheek (thus ‘full up as far as the cheeks’). It resurfaces in the 17th century as choke-ful, which has given rise to the idea that it may originally have meant ‘so full as to choke’. The available evidence seems too scanty to come to a firm conclusion.
command: command: [13] Ultimately, command and commend are the same word. Both come from Latin compound verbs formed from the intensive prefix com- and the verb mandāre ‘entrust, commit to someone’s charge’ (from which we get mandate). In the classical period this combination produced commendāre ‘commit to someone’s charge, commend, recommend’, which passed into English in the 14th century (recommend, a medieval formation, was acquired by English from medieval Latin in the 14th century).

Later on, the compounding process was repeated, giving late Latin commandāre. By this time, mandāre had come to mean ‘order’ as well as ‘entrust’ (a change reflected in English mandatory). Commandāre inherited both these senses, and they coexisted through Old French comander and Anglo- Norman comaunder into Middle English commande.

But ‘entrust’ was gradually taken over from the 14th century by commend, and by the end of the 15th century command meant simply ‘order’. Commandeer and commando are both of Afrikaans origin, and became established in English at the end of the 19th century largely as a result of the Boer War. Commodore [17] is probably a modification of Dutch komandeur, from French commandeur ‘commander’.
=> commend, commodore, demand, mandatory, recommend, remand
compact: compact: There are two distinct words compact in English; both are of Latin origin, but they come from completely different sources. The adjective, ‘compressed’ [14], comes from Latin compactus, the past participle of compingere, a compound verb formed from com- ‘together’ and pangere ‘fasten’. The noun use ‘small case for face powder’ is 20th-century and based on the notion of firmly compacted powder. Compact ‘agreement’ [16] comes from Latin compactum, a noun based on the past participle of the verb compacīscī ‘come to an agreement’. The unprefixed form pacīscī, a relative of Latin pax ‘peace’, gave English pact [15].
=> pact, peace
compete: compete: [17] Compete comes from Latin competere. This was a compound verb formed from com- ‘together’ and petere ‘seek, strive’ (source of English petition, appetite, impetus, and repeat). At first this meant ‘come together, agree, be fit or suitable’, and the last of these meanings was taken up in the present participial adjective competēns, source of English competent [14]. In later Latin, however, competere developed the sense ‘strive together’, and this formed the basis of English compete.
=> appetite, competent, impetus, petition, repeat
condign: condign: [15] From its virtually exclusive modern use in the phrase condign punishment, condign has come to be regarded frequently as meaning ‘severe’, but etymologically it signifies ‘fully deserved’. It comes via Old French condigne from Latin condignus, a compound adjective formed from the intensive prefix comand dignus ‘worthy’ (source of English dainty, deign, dignity, disdain, and indignant, and related to decent). The collocation with punishment arises from the frequent use of the phrase in Tudor acts of parliament.
=> dainty, decent, deign, dignity, disdain, indignant
congress: congress: [16] A congress is literally a ‘coming together’ – hence, a ‘meeting’. The word comes from Latin congressus, which was based on the past participial stem of congredī ‘come together’. This was a compound verb formed from the prefix com- ‘together’ and gradī ‘go, walk’ (a derivative of gradus ‘step’, from which English gets grade, gradual, and graduate). The application of the word to the US legislature dates from the 1770s.
=> grade, gradual, graduate, progress, transgress
congruent: congruent: [15] Etymologically, triangles that are congruent ‘come together’ or ‘agree’ – that is, are similar. The word comes from congruēns, the present participle of Latin congruere ‘come together, meet, agree’. This was a compound verb formed from the prefix com- ‘together’ and a verb, *gruere, not found elsewhere (some have linked it with Latin ruere ‘fall’ – ultimate source of English ruin – in which case congruere would have meant literally ‘fall together’, but others have seen a connection with Greek zakhrēēs ‘attacking violently’). Incongruous is a 17thcentury adoption from Latin incongruus.
consist: consist: [16] Latin consistere meant originally ‘stand still, be firmly in place’. It was a compound verb formed from the intensive prefix com- and sistere ‘place’ (a relative of Latin stāre, which entered into a parallel compound to form constāre ‘stand firm’, source of English constant [14]). The concrete concept of ‘standing firm’ passed into the more abstract ‘exist’, and hence ‘have a particular kind of existence, have particular inherent qualities’. By the time English borrowed the verb it had come to mean ‘be composed of’.
=> constant, constitute
convenient: convenient: [14] Convenient comes from Latin conveniēns, the present participle of convenire ‘come together, be suitable, agree’, a compound verb formed from the prefix com- ‘together’ and venire ‘come’ (a distant relative of English come). Convenient reflects the more figurative of convenire’s meanings, as ultimately does covenant, but its original literal sense ‘assemble’ is preserved in convene [15], convention [15], convent, and coven.
=> convent, convention, coven, covenant, venue
convent: convent: [13] Latin conventus meant ‘assembly’ (it was the past participle of convenire ‘come together’, source of English convenient), but as it passed via Anglo-Norman covent into English it acquired the specialized sense ‘religious community’ (in early use it was applied to communities of either sex, but since the end of the 18th century it has come to be used exclusively for a ‘house of nuns’).

Until the mid- 15th century the Anglo-Norman spelling covent was retained in English (it survives in Covent Garden, which was formerly a vegetable garden belonging to the monks of Westminster Abbey, and may also the the source of coven [16]).
=> convenient, coven, venue
cope: cope: There are two distinct words cope in English. The now more familiar one, ‘deal with’ [14], comes from Old French coper, and originally meant ‘hit, punch’. The Old French verb was a derivative of the noun cop ‘blow’, which in turn was a variant of colp (from which modern French gets coup, borrowed into English in the 18th century). This came via medieval Latin colpus (ultimate source of English coppice) and Latin colaphus from Greek kólaphos ‘blow, punch’.

The modern English sense of the verb developed via ‘come to blows with’ and ‘contend with’ to ‘handle successfully’. Cope ‘cloak’ [13] was borrowed from medieval Latin cāpa, a variant of cappa, which produced English cap and cape as well as chapel and chaperone. It may ultimately be descended from Latin caput ‘head’.
=> coppice, coup; cap, cape, chapel, chaperon
cotton: cotton: [14] As with knowledge of the plant, its name cotton came to Europe from the Middle East. It originated in Arabic qutn, which passed via Spanish into the other languages of Europe. English acquired it via Old French coton. The verbal idiom cotton (on) to ‘come to understand’ developed in the 20th century from an earlier ‘harmonize, agree’. This in turn has been traced back to a still earlier ‘prosper’, which seems to have originated in the 16th century with the notion of the successful raising of the nap on cotton cloth.
covenant: covenant: [13] The notion of ‘agreement’ in covenant comes originally from a literal ‘coming together’. It was borrowed from Old French covenant, a noun use of the present participle of the verb covenir ‘agree’, which was descended from Latin convenire ‘come together’ (source also of English convene, convenient, convention, convent, and coven). (Modern French has restored the n, giving convenir.)
=> convenient, convent, convention, coven, venue
currant: currant: [14] Etymologically, currants are grapes from ‘Corinth’. In the Middle Ages Corinth, in Greece, exported small dried grapes of particularly high quality, which became known in Old French as raisins de Corinthe ‘grapes of Corinth’. This phrase passed via Anglo-Norman raisins de corauntz into Middle English as raisins of coraunce. By the 16th century, coraunce had come to be regarded as a plural form, and a new singular was coined from it – at first coren, and then in the 17th century currant.

In the late 16th century, too, the name was transferred to fruit such as the blackcurrant and redcurrant, under the mistaken impression that the ‘dried-grape’ currant was made from them.
dais: dais: [13] Ultimately, dais and disc are the same word. Both came from Latin discus ‘quoit’, which by medieval times had come to mean ‘table’ (see DESK). Its Old French descendant was deis, which was borrowed into Middle English as deis. It died out in English around 1600, but it survived in Scottish English, and was revived in England by antiquarians, its spelling based on the modern French form dais. Historically it is a monosyllabic word, and the modern two-syllable pronunciation represents an attempt to render the unfamiliar French word.
=> desk, disc, dish
determine: determine: [14] The central meaning of determine is ‘fix a limit to’, as in ‘determine the scope of an enquiry’. It comes via Old French determiner from Latin dētermināre, a compound verb formed from the prefix dē- ‘off’ and termināre ‘limit’ (source of English terminate). Its connotations of ‘firm resolve’, a 17th-century development, came via an intermediate sense ‘come to a firm decision on’.
=> terminate
dome: dome: [16] Dome originally meant ‘house’ in English – it was borrowed from Latin domus ‘house’ (source of English domestic). However, in other European languages the descendants of domus had come to signify more than a humble dwelling house, and its new meanings spread to English. The word increasingly encompassed stately mansions and important places of worship. Italian duomo and German dom mean ‘cathedral’, for instance (a sense adopted by English in the late 17th and early 18th centuries), and since a leading characteristic of Italian cathedrals is their cupola, the word was soon applied to this.
=> domestic
domino: domino: [18] The word domino was borrowed from French, where it originally signified (in the 16th century) a sort of hooded cloak worn by priests. It presumably represents a form of Latin dominus ‘lord, master’, but the reason for the application has never been satisfactorily explained (one suggestion is that it comes from the ritual formula benedicamus Domino ‘let us bless the Lord’).

By the time English acquired it, it had come to mean ‘hooded cloak with a halfmask, worn at masquerades’, and by the 19th century it was being used for the mask itself. It is far from clear whether the application to the game played with small rectangular blocks, which dates in English from the 19th century, represents a new use of the same word or a return to the original Latin, but either way the reason behind the usage is not known.

A possibility that has been advanced is that the winner of the game originally shouted domino! ‘lord!’.
effigy: effigy: [16] Effigy comes ultimately from the Latin verb effingere ‘form, portray’. This was a compound formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and fingere ‘make, shape’ (source of English faint, feign, fiction, figment, and related to English dairy and dough). It formed the basis of the noun effigiēs ‘representation, likeness, portrait’, which was borrowed into English in the 16th century as effigies: ‘If that you were the good Sir Rowland’s son, as you have whisper’d faithfully you were, and as mine eye doth his effigies witness most truly limn’d and living in your face, be truly welcome hither’, Shakespeare, As you like it 1600.

By the 18th century, however, this had come to be regarded as a plural form, and so a new singular, effigy, was created.
=> dairy, dough, faint, fiction, figment
elephant: elephant: [13] Elephants were named from their tusks. Greek eléphās (probably a borrowing from a non-Indo-European language) meant originally ‘ivory’ (hence chryselephantine ‘of gold and ivory’ [19]). Only later did it come to denote the animal itself, and it passed in this sense into Latin as elephantus. By post-classical times this had become *olifantus, and it is a measure of the unfamiliarity of the beast in northern Europe in the first millenium AD that when Old English acquired the word, as olfend, it was used for the ‘camel’.

Old French also had olifant (referring to the ‘elephant’ this time) and passed it on to English as olifaunt. It was not until the 14th century that, under the influence of the classical Latin form, this began to change to elephant. In the 16th and 17th centuries there was a learned revival of the sense ‘ivory’: Alexander Pope, for instance, in his translation of the Odyssey 1725, refers to ‘the handle … with steel and polish’d elephant adorn’d’.

The notion of the white elephant as ‘something unwanted’ arose apparently from the practice of the kings of Siam presenting courtiers who had incurred their displeasure with real white elephants, the cost of whose proper upkeep was ruinously high.
elope: elope: [17] Etymologically, elope signifies ‘leap away’. It was originally an Anglo-Norman legal term applied to a married woman running off with a lover, and only in the past couple of hundred years has it come to be applied to a couple leaving home to get married when parental permission is denied. It is thought that the Anglo-Norman term was an adaptation of Middle English *alopen, past participle of an unrecorded verb *alepen ‘run away’, which would have been formed from the prefix a- ‘away’ and lepen ‘run, leap’ (source of modern English leap and related to lope and German laufen ‘run’).
=> leap, lope
far: far: [OE] Far is a word of ancient ancestry. It goes back to Indo-European *per-, which also produced Greek pérā ‘beyond, further’ and Sanskrit paras ‘beyond’. The Germanic descendant of the Indo-European form was *fer-, whose comparative form *ferrō ‘further’ passed into Old English as feorr, having lost its comparative connotations and come to mean simply ‘far’.

The Old English comparative was fierr, but in early Middle English this too lost its comparative force and a new form was created with the -er ending, ferrer, later farrer. This in turn was gradually replaced by further (a completely different – although probably distantly related – word, based on forth), of which farther is a 13th-century variant modelled on far.
gather: gather: [OE] Gather goes back ultimately to Germanic *gath- ‘bring together, unite’ (which also produced English good). From it was derived *gadurī (source of English together), which in turn formed the basis of a verb *gadurōjan. Its offspring include Middle High German gaten ‘come together’, Old Frisian gadia ‘unite’, and Old English gaderian, whence modern English gather. It also produced German gatte ‘husband, spouse’, originally ‘companion’.
=> good, together
gimmick: gimmick: [20] Gimmick originally meant ‘dishonest contrivance’ – indeed, in the first known printed reference to it, in George Maine’s and Bruce Grant’s Wise-crack dictionary 1926 (an American publication), it is defined specifically as a ‘device for making a fair game crooked’. The modern sense ‘stratagem for gaining attention’ seems to have come to the fore in the 1940s. The origins of the word are a mystery, although it has been suggested that it began as gimac, an anagram of magic used by conjurers.
goat: goat: [OE] Old English had no all-purpose word for ‘goat’; the male goat was a bucca (‘buck’) and the female goat was a gāt. In early Middle English, goat began to encroach on the semantic territory of buck, and by the 14th century it had come to be the dominant form for both sexes, as is shown by the emergence around that time of the distinguishing terms she-goat and he-goat (nanny-goat and billy-goat are much later – 18th-century and 19th-century respectively). Goat itself comes via prehistoric Germanic *gaitaz (source of German geiss, Dutch geit, Swedish get, and Danish ged) from Indo- European *ghaidos.

This may be related to Lithuanian zaidziu ‘play’, and if so, the goat could be etymologically the ‘animal that jumps about’ (semantic development in the opposite direction has given English caper from Latin caper ‘goat’).
haberdasher: haberdasher: [14] No one is too sure what Anglo-Norman hapertas meant – perhaps ‘piece of cloth’, perhaps ‘small goods’ – but it is the nearest we can come to the origin of that curious word haberdasher. The theory is that it had an Anglo-Norman derivative, *habertasser or *haberdasser, never actually recorded, which passed into Middle English as haberdassher.

The term seems originally to have denoted a ‘seller of small fancy goods’ – and indeed in the 16th and 17th centuries it was often used synonymously with milliner, which had a similar broad meaning in those days – but gradually it passed into two more specific applications, ‘seller of hats’ (now obsolete in British English, but surviving in the American sense ‘seller of men’s hats, gloves, etc’) and ‘seller of dressmaking accessories’.
harlot: harlot: [13] The use of harlot for ‘prostitute’ is a comparatively recent development in the word’s history. It originally meant ‘tramp, beggar’, and did not come to mean ‘prostitute’ until the 15th century. It was borrowed from Old French harlot or herlot ‘vagabond’, a word of unknown ancestry with relatives in Italian (arlotto) and Provençal (arlot).
heyday: heyday: [16] Etymologically, the -day of heyday has no connection with the English noun day, although it has come to resemble it over the centuries. Nor is hey- related to hay. Originally the word was heyda, an exclamation roughly equivalent to modern English hurrah. Probably it was just an extension of hey, modelled partly on Low German heida ‘hurrah’. Its earliest noun use (first recorded in the 1590s) was in the sense ‘state of exultation’; the influence of the day-like second syllable did not make itself felt until the mid-18th century, when the modern sense ‘period of greatest success’ began to emerge.
imp: imp: [OE] Old English impe meant ‘new shoot, sapling’. Its ultimate source was medieval Latin impotus ‘graft’, a borrowing from Greek émphutos, which itself was an adjective derived from the verb emphúein ‘implant’. In the early Middle English period it began to be transferred from plants to people, carrying its connotations of ‘newness’ or ‘youth’ with it, so that by the 14th century it had come to mean ‘child’.

And in the 16th century, in a development similar to that which produced the now obsolete sense of limb ‘naughty child’, it was applied to ‘mischievous children, children of the Devil’, and hence to ‘mischievous or evil spirits’.
improve: improve: [16] The -prove of improve has no direct connection with the verb prove, although the two have come to resemble each other over the centuries. It comes ultimately from late Latin prōde ‘advantageous’ (source of English proud). This gave Old French prou ‘profit’, which was combined in Anglo-Norman with the causative prefix em- to produce the verb emprouer. This originally meant ‘turn to a profit, turn to one’s advantage’, a sense which survives in English in one or two fossilized contexts such as ‘improve the shining hour’. Modern English ‘make or get better’ developed in the 17th century.
=> proud
injury: injury: [14] Etymologically, an injury is something ‘unjust’. It comes via Anglo-Norman injurie from Latin injūria, a noun use of injūrius ‘unjust’, which was a compound adjective based on jūs ‘right’ (source of English just). Its original meaning in English was ‘wrongful action’, and it was only gradually that the notion of ‘harm’ (which had actually been present in the word from classical Latin times) began to come to the fore.
=> just
intransigent: intransigent: [19] In the 18th century there was an extreme leftist political party in Spain which, because of its unwillingness ever to compromise, was known as los intransigentes. The name was formed with the negative prefix in- from transigentes, the present participle of Spanish transigir ‘compromise’. This was a descendant of Latin transigere, literally ‘drive through’, hence ‘come to an understanding, accomplish’ (source of English transact), a compound verb formed from trans- ‘through’ and agere ‘drive’ (from which English gets action, agent, etc.) French took the Spanish word over as a general adjective meaning ‘uncompromising’, and English acquired it in the early 1880s.
=> act, action, agent, transact
jolly: jolly: [14] Old French jolif meant ‘pleasant, merry, festive’ (it has been speculated that it may have been derived from jól, the Old Norse term for the midwinter festival, to which English yule is closely related). English took the adjective over, and whereas in French (the modern form is joli) it has come to mean ‘pretty’, in English it kept closer to the original sense ‘merry’.
=> yule