英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

cobalt [cobalt 词源字典]: 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).
[cobalt etymology, cobalt origin, 英语词源]
gargoyle: gargoyle: [15] The ancient root *garg-, *gurgoriginated as an imitation of throat sounds. From it were derived such guttural words as Greek gargaraaizein ‘gargle’ (whence Latin gargarizāre ‘gargle’) and Latin gurguliō ‘gullet’ (Latin gurges, source of English gorge and regurgitate, had moved further figuratively to ‘whirlpool’).

Among the offspring of gurguliō are Vulgar Latin *gurguliāre, source of English gurgle [16], and Old French gargouille ‘throat’. Roof spouts carved in the shape of grotesque creatures had the term gargouille applied to them from the notion that the rain-water was coming out of their throats – hence English gargoyle. Gargouille also formed the basis of the verb gargouiller ‘gargle, gurgle’, from which English gets gargle [16].
=> gargle, gurgle
hobbit: hobbit: [20] The name of these small furry-footed human-like creatures was invented by their creator, J.R.R. Tolkien, and first appeared in public in The Hobbit (1937). It probably simply occurred to him as a pleasing- and appropriatesounding name, but with typical linguistic thoroughness he later worked up a detailed etymological rationale for it: in their own language, he claimed, hobbits were called kuduk; this was a worn-down version of an original kûd-dûkan, which meant literally ‘holedweller’; in Old English, ‘hole-dweller’ would have been holbytla, which in modern English could plausibly have become eroded to hobbit.
lobster: lobster: [OE] The Latin word locusta denoted both the voracious grasshopper, the ‘locust’, and the ‘lobster’ or similar crustaceans, such as the crayfish (if, as has been suggested, the word is related to Greek lēkan ‘jump’, then presumably the ‘grasshopper’ sense was primary, and the ‘lobster’ application arose from some supposed resemblance between the two creatures).

English has borrowed the Latin word twice. Most recently it came in the easily recognizable guise locust [13], but lobster too goes back to the same source. The radical change of form may be due to the influence of the Old English word loppe ‘spider’ – the Old English precursor of lobster was loppestre or lopystre.
=> locust
tact: tact: [17] Tact originally denoted the ‘sense of touch’ (that is what Alexander Ross was referring to when he wrote ‘Of all the creatures, the sense of tact is most exquisite in man’, Arcana microcosmi 1651). But by the end of the 18th century it had evolved semantically via ‘refined faculty of perception’ to ‘skill in behaving or speaking with propriety or sensitivity’.

It was acquired via French tact from Latin tactus ‘sense of touch’, a noun use of the past participle of tangere ‘touch’ (source of English contact, tangent, tangible, etc). Tactile [17], from the Latin derivative tactilis, preserves the original notion of ‘touching’.
=> contact, contagion, tactile, tangent, tangible
worm: worm: [OE] The ancestral meaning of worm appears to be ‘snake’; its application to smaller limbless creatures is a secondary development. It comes from a prehistoric Germanic *wurmiz, *wurmaz, which also produced German wurm, Dutch worm, and Danish orm ‘worm’ and Swedish orm ‘snake’. And this in turn went back to Indo-European *wrmi-, *wrmo- (source also of Latin vermis, from which English gets vermilion and vermin), a possible derivative of the base *wer- ‘turn, twist’ (source of English convert, reverse, etc) – in which case the worm would be etymologically the ‘twisting’ or ‘winding’ creature.
=> vermilion, vermin
aspic (n.): "savory meat jelly," 1789, from French aspic "jelly" (18c.), literally "asp," from Old French aspe (see asp) + ending from basilisc "basilisk" (the two creatures sometimes were confused with one another). The foodstuff said to be so called from its coldness (froid comme un aspic is said by Littré to be a proverbial phrase), or the colors in the gelatin, or the shape of the mold. It also was a French word for "lavendar spike" and might refer to this as a seasoning element.
bug (v.1): "to bulge, protrude," 1872, originally of eyes, perhaps from a humorous or dialect mispronunciation of bulge (v.). Related: Bugged; bugging. As an adjective, bug-eyed recorded from 1872; so commonly used of space creatures in mid-20c. science fiction that the initialism (acronym) BEM for bug-eyed monster was current by 1953.
coelacanth (n.): 1857, from Modern Latin Coelacanthus (genus name, 1839, Agassiz), from Greek koilos "hollow" (from PIE root *kel- (2); see cell) + akantha "spine" (see acrid). So called from the hollow fin rays supporting the tail. Known only as a fossil, the most recent one from 70 million years ago, until discovered living in the sea off the east coast of South Africa Dec. 22, 1938. The specimen was described by Marjorie Courtney-Latimer, who wrote about it to S.African ichthyologist J.L.B. Smith.
I stared and stared, at first in puzzlement. I did not know any fish of our own, or indeed of any seas like that; it looked more like a lizard. And then a bomb seemed to burst in my brain, and beyond that sketch and the paper of the letter, I was looking at a series of fishy creatures that flashed up as on a screen, fishes no longer here, fishes that had lived in dim past ages gone, and of which only fragmentary remains in rock are known. [J.L.B. Smith, "Old Fourlegs: The Story of the Coelacanth," 1956]
ephemera (n.): late 14c., originally a medical term, from Medieval Latin ephemera (febris) "(fever) lasting a day," from fem. of ephemerus, from Greek ephemeros "daily, for the day," also "lasting or living only one day, short-lived," from epi "on" (see epi-) + hemerai, dative of hemera "day," from PIE *amer- "day." Sense extended 17c. to short-lived insects (Modern Latin ephemera musca) and flowers; general sense of "thing of transitory existence" is first attested 1751. Compare Greek ephemeroi "men," literally "creatures of a day."
fairy (n.): c. 1300, fairie, "the country or home of supernatural or legendary creatures; fairyland," also "something incredible or fictitious," from Old French faerie "land of fairies, meeting of fairies; enchantment, magic, witchcraft, sorcery" (12c.), from fae "fay," from Latin fata "the Fates," plural of fatum "that which is ordained; destiny, fate," from PIE *bha- "to speak" (see fame (n.)). Also compare fate (n.), also fay.
In ordinary use an elf differs from a fairy only in generally seeming young, and being more often mischievous. [Century Dictionary]
But that was before Tolkien. As a type of supernatural being from late 14c. [contra Tolkien; for example "This maketh that ther been no fairyes" in "Wife of Bath's Tale"], perhaps via intermediate forms such as fairie knight "supernatural or legendary knight" (c. 1300), as in Spenser, where faeries are heroic and human-sized. As a name for the diminutive winged beings in children's stories from early 17c.
Yet I suspect that this flower-and-butterfly minuteness was also a product of "rationalization," which transformed the glamour of Elfland into mere finesse, and invisibility into a fragility that could hide in a cowslip or shrink behind a blade of grass. It seems to become fashionable soon after the great voyages had begun to make the world seem too narrow to hold both men and elves; when the magic land of Hy Breasail in the West had become the mere Brazils, the land of red-dye-wood. [J.R.R. Tolkien, "On Fairy-Stories," 1947]
Hence, figurative adjective use in reference to lightness, fineness, delicacy. Slang meaning "effeminate male homosexual" is recorded by 1895. Fairy ring, of certain fungi in grass fields (as we would explain it now), is from 1590s. Fairy godmother attested from 1820. Fossil Cretaceous sea urchins found on the English downlands were called fairy loaves, and a book from 1787 reports that "country people" in England called the stones of the old Roman roads fairy pavements.
feather (n.): Old English feðer "a feather; a pen," in plural, "wings," from Proto-Germanic *fethro (cognates: Old Saxon fethara, Old Norse fioþr, Swedish fjäder, Middle Dutch vedere, Dutch veder, Old High German fedara, German Feder), from PIE *pet-ra-, from root *pet- "to rush, to fly" (see petition (n.)). Feather-headed "silly" is from 1640s. Feather-duster attested by 1835. Figurative use of feather in (one's) cap attested by 1734. Birds of a feather "creatures of the same kind" is from 1580s.
flesh (n.): Old English flæsc "flesh, meat, muscular parts of animal bodies; body (as opposed to soul)," also "living creatures," also "near kindred" (a sense now obsolete except in phrase flesh and blood), common West and North Germanic (compare Old Frisian flesk, Middle Low German vlees, German Fleisch "flesh," Old Norse flesk "pork, bacon"), which is of uncertain origin; according to Watkins, perhaps from Proto-Germanic *flaiskjan "piece of meat torn off," from PIE *pleik- "to tear."

Of fruits from 1570s. Figurative use for "carnal nature, animal or physical nature of man" (Old English) is from the Bible, especially Paul's use of Greek sarx, and this led to sense of "sensual appetites" (c. 1200).

Flesh-wound is from 1670s; flesh-color, the hue of "Caucasian" skin, is first recorded 1610s, described as a tint composed of "a light pink with a little yellow" [O'Neill, "Dyeing," 1862]. In the flesh "in a bodily form" (1650s) originally was of Jesus (Wyclif has up the flesh, Tindale after the flesh). An Old English poetry-word for "body" was flæsc-hama, literally "flesh-home." A religious tract from 1548 has fleshling "a sensual person." Flesh-company (1520s) was an old term for "sexual intercourse."
girl (n.): c. 1300, gyrle "child, young person" (of either sex but most frequently of females), of unknown origin. One guess [OED] leans toward an unrecorded Old English *gyrele, from Proto-Germanic *gurwilon-, diminutive of *gurwjoz (apparently also represented by Low German gære "boy, girl," Norwegian dialectal gorre, Swedish dialectal gurre "small child," though the exact relationship, if any, between all these is obscure), from PIE *ghwrgh-, also found in Greek parthenos "virgin." But this involves some objectionable philology. Liberman (2008) writes:
Girl does not go back to any Old English or Old Germanic form. It is part of a large group of Germanic words whose root begins with a g or k and ends in r. The final consonant in girl is a diminutive suffix. The g-r words denote young animals, children, and all kinds of creatures considered immature, worthless, or past their prime.
Another candidate is Old English gierela "garment" (for possible sense evolution in this theory, compare brat). A former folk-etymology derivation from Latin garrulus "chattering, talkative" is now discarded. Like boy, lass, lad it is of more or less obscure origin. "Probably most of them arose as jocular transferred uses of words that had originally different meaning" [OED]. Specific meaning of "female child" is late 14c. Applied to "any young unmarried woman" since mid-15c. Meaning "sweetheart" is from 1640s. Old girl in reference to a woman of any age is recorded from 1826. Girl next door as a type of unflashy attractiveness is recorded by 1953.
Doris [Day] was a big vocalist even before she hit the movies in 1948. There, as the latest movie colony "girl next door," sunny-faced Doris soon became a leading movie attraction as well as the world's top female recording star. "She's the girl next door, all right," said one Hollywood admirer. "Next door to the bank." ["Life" magazine, Dec. 22, 1958]
Girl Friday "resourceful young woman assistant" is from 1940, a reference to "Robinson Crusoe." Girl Scout is from 1909. For the usual Old English word, see maiden.
grampus (n.): a word applied to killer whales and other large, dolphin-like creatures, 1590s, earlier graundepose (1520s), altered (by influence of grand) from Middle English graspeys (late 13c.), from Anglo-French grampais, from Old French graspois, craspois "whale, (salted) whale meat; blubber; seal," from Medieval Latin craspicis, literally "great fish" or "fat fish," from Latin crassus "thick" + piscis "fish" (see fish (n.)). For specifics of usage in English, see OED.
Hobbit (n.): 1937, coined in the fantasy tales of J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973).
On a blank leaf I scrawled: 'In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.' I did not and do not know why. [Tolkien, letter to W.H. Auden, dated 1955]
The word also turns up in a very long list of folkloric supernatural creatures in the writings of Michael Aislabie Denham (d.1859), printed in volume 2 of "The Denham Tracts" [ed. James Hardy, London: Folklore Society, 1895], a compilation of Denham's scattered publications. Denham was an early folklorist who concentrated on Northumberland, Durham, Westmoreland, Cumberland, the Isle of Man, and Scotland.
What a happiness this must have been seventy or eighty years ago and upwards, to those chosen few who had the good luck to be born on the eve of this festival of all festivals; when the whole earth was so overrun with ghosts, boggles, bloody-bones, spirits, demons, ignis fatui, brownies, bugbears, black dogs, specters, shellycoats, scarecrows, witches, wizards, barguests, Robin-Goodfellows, hags, night-bats, scrags, breaknecks, fantasms, hobgoblins, hobhoulards, boggy-boes, dobbies, hob-thrusts, fetches, kelpies, warlocks, mock-beggars, mum-pokers, Jemmy-burties, urchins, satyrs, pans, fauns, sirens, tritons, centaurs, calcars, nymphs, imps, incubuses, spoorns, men-in-the-oak, hell-wains, fire-drakes, kit-a-can-sticks, Tom-tumblers, melch-dicks, larrs, kitty-witches, hobby-lanthorns, Dick-a-Tuesdays, Elf-fires, Gyl-burnt-tales, knockers, elves, rawheads, Meg-with-the-wads, old-shocks, ouphs, pad-foots, pixies, pictrees, giants, dwarfs, Tom-pokers, tutgots, snapdragons, sprets, spunks, conjurers, thurses, spurns, tantarrabobs, swaithes, tints, tod-lowries, Jack-in-the-Wads, mormos, changelings, redcaps, yeth-hounds, colt-pixies, Tom-thumbs, black-bugs, boggarts, scar-bugs, shag-foals, hodge-pochers, hob-thrushes, bugs, bull-beggars, bygorns, bolls, caddies, bomen, brags, wraiths, waffs, flay-boggarts, fiends, gallytrots, imps, gytrashes, patches, hob-and-lanthorns, gringes, boguests, bonelesses, Peg-powlers, pucks, fays, kidnappers, gallybeggars, hudskins, nickers, madcaps, trolls, robinets, friars' lanthorns, silkies, cauld-lads, death-hearses, goblins, hob-headlesses, bugaboos, kows, or cowes, nickies, nacks necks, waiths, miffies, buckies, ghouls, sylphs, guests, swarths, freiths, freits, gy-carlins Gyre-carling, pigmies, chittifaces, nixies, Jinny-burnt-tails, dudmen, hell-hounds, dopple-gangers, boggleboes, bogies, redmen, portunes, grants, hobbits, hobgoblins, brown-men, cowies, dunnies, wirrikows, alholdes, mannikins, follets, korreds, lubberkins, cluricauns, kobolds, leprechauns, kors, mares, korreds, puckles korigans, sylvans, succubuses, blackmen, shadows, banshees, lian-hanshees, clabbernappers, Gabriel-hounds, mawkins, doubles, corpse lights or candles, scrats, mahounds, trows, gnomes, sprites, fates, fiends, sibyls, nicknevins, whitewomen, fairies, thrummy-caps, cutties, and nisses, and apparitions of every shape, make, form, fashion, kind and description, that there was not a village in England that had not its own peculiar ghost. Nay, every lone tenement, castle, or mansion-house, which could boast of any antiquity had its bogle, its specter, or its knocker. The churches, churchyards, and crossroads were all haunted. Every green lane had its boulder-stone on which an apparition kept watch at night. Every common had its circle of fairies belonging to it. And there was scarcely a shepherd to be met with who had not seen a spirit!
[Emphasis added] It is curious that the name occurs nowhere else in folklore, and there is no evidence that Tolkien ever saw this. The word also was recorded from 1835 as "a term generally used in Wales to express a quantity made up of four Welsh pecks." Hobbitry attested from 1947.
inert (adj.): 1640s, from French inerte (16c.) or directly from Latin inertem (nominative iners) "unskilled, inactive, helpless, sluggish, worthless," from in- "without" + ars (genitive artis) "skill" (see art (n.)). Originally of matter; specifically of gases from 1885. Of persons or creatures, from 1774.
jellyfish (n.): popular name of the medusa and similar sea-creatures, 1796, from jelly (n.) + fish (n.). Earlier it had been used of a type of actual fish (1707).
luciferase (n.): supposed enzyme found in fireflies and other glowing creatures, 1888, from French luciférase; see Lucifer. Related: Luciferin.
mercy (n.): late 12c., "God's forgiveness of his creatures' offenses," from Old French mercit, merci (9c.) "reward, gift; kindness, grace, pity," from Latin mercedem (nominative merces) "reward, wages, pay hire" (in Vulgar Latin "favor, pity"), from merx (genitive mercis) "wares, merchandise" (see market (n.)). In Church Latin (6c.) applied to the heavenly reward of those who show kindness to the helpless.

Meaning "disposition to forgive or show compassion" is attested from early 13c. As an interjection, attested from mid-13c. In French largely superseded by miséricorde except as a word of thanks. Seat of mercy "golden covering of the Ark of the Covenant" (1530) is Tyndale's loan-translation of Luther's gnadenstuhl, an inexact rendering of Hebrew kapporeth, literally "propitiatory."
monster (n.): early 14c., "malformed animal or human, creature afflicted with a birth defect," from Old French monstre, mostre "monster, monstrosity" (12c.), and directly from Latin monstrum "divine omen, portent, sign; abnormal shape; monster, monstrosity," figuratively "repulsive character, object of dread, awful deed, abomination," from root of monere "warn" (see monitor (n.)). Abnormal or prodigious animals were regarded as signs or omens of impending evil. Extended by late 14c. to imaginary animals composed of parts of creatures (centaur, griffin, etc.). Meaning "animal of vast size" is from 1520s; sense of "person of inhuman cruelty or wickedness" is from 1550s. As an adjective, "of extraordinary size," from 1837. In Old English, the monster Grendel was an aglæca, a word related to aglæc "calamity, terror, distress, oppression."
spider (n.): late 14c., spydyr, from earlier spiþre, spiþur, spiþer (14c.), from Old English spiðra, from Proto-Germanic *spin-thron- (cognate with Danish spinder), literally "the spinner," from *spen-wo- "to spin" (see spin (v.)) + formative or agential *-thro. The connection with the root is more transparent in other Germanic cognates (such as Middle Low German, Middle Dutch, Middle High German, German spinne, Dutch spin "spider").
The male is commonly much smaller than the female, and in impregnating the female runs great risk of being devoured. The difference in sizes is as if the human female should be some 60 or 70 feet tall. [Century Dictionary]
Not the common word in Old English, which identified the creatures as loppe, lobbe, also atorcoppe, and, from Latin, renge. Another Old English word was gangewifre "a weaver as he goes," and Middle English had araine "spider" (14c.-15c., from French). In literature, often a figure of cunning, skill, and industry as well as poisonous predation; in 17c. English used figuratively for poisonousness and thread-spinning but also sensitivity (to vibrations), lurking, independence. As the name for a type of two-pack solitaire, it is attested from 1890. Spider crab is from 1710, used of various species; spider monkey is from 1764, so called for its long limbs.
theism (n.): 1670s, "belief in a deity or deities," (as opposed to atheism); by 1711 as "belief in one god" (as opposed to polytheism); by 1714 as "belief in the existence of God as creator and ruler of the universe" (as opposed to deism), the usual modern sense; see theist + -ism.
Theism assumes a living relation of God to his creatures, but does not define it. It differs from deism in that the latter is negative and involves a denial of revelation, while the former is affirmative, and underlies Christianity. One may be a theist and not be a Christian, but he cannot be a Christian and not be a theist. [Century Dictionary]
vermin (n.): c. 1300, "noxious animals," from Anglo-French and Old French vermin "moth, worm, mite," in plural "troublesome creatures" (12c.), from Vulgar Latin *verminum "vermin," possibly including bothersome insects, collective noun formed from Latin vermis "worm" (see worm (n.)). Extended to "low, obnoxious people" by 1560s.
vivarium (n.): c. 1600, "game park," from Latin vivarium "enclosure for live game, park, warren, preserve, fish pond," noun use of neuter singular of vivarius "pertaining to living creatures," from vivus "alive, living" (see vivid). Meaning "glass bowl for studying living creatures" is from 1853.
volatile (adj.): 1590s "fine or light," also "evaporating rapidly" (c. 1600), from Middle French volatile, from Latin volatilis "fleeting, transitory; swift, rapid; flying, winged," from past participle stem of volare "to fly" (see volant). Sense of "readily changing, flighty, fickle" is first recorded 1640s. Volatiles in Middle English meant "birds, butterflies, and other winged creatures" (c. 1300).
whore (n.): 1530s spelling alteration (see wh-) of Middle English hore, from Old English hore "prostitute, harlot," from Proto-Germanic *horaz (fem. *horon-) "one who desires" (cognates: Old Norse hora "adulteress," Danish hore, Swedish hora, Dutch hoer, Old High German huora "whore;" in Gothic only in the masc. hors "adulterer, fornicator," also as a verb, horinon "commit adultery"), from PIE *ka- "to like, desire," a base that has produced words in other languages for "lover" (cognates: Latin carus "dear;" Old Irish cara "friend;" Old Persian kama "desire;" Sanskrit Kama, name of the Hindu god of love, kamah "love, desire," the first element in Kama Sutra).

Whore itself is perhaps a Germanic euphemism for a word that has not survived. The Old English vowel naturally would have yielded *hoor, which is the pronunciation in some dialects; it might have shifted by influence of Middle English homonym hore "physical filth, slime," also "moral corruption, sin," from Old English horh. The wh- form became current 16c. A general term of abuse for an unchaste or lewd woman (without regard to money) from at least c. 1200. Of male prostitutes from 1630s. Whore of Babylon is from Rev. xvii:1, 5, etc. In Middle English with occasional plural forms horen, heoranna.
The word, with its derivatives, is now avoided polite speech; its survival in literature, so as it survives, is due to the fact that it is a favorite word with Shakspere (who uses it, with its derivatives, 99 times) and is common in the authorized English version of the Bible ... though the American revisers recommended the substitution of harlot as less gross .... [Century Dictionary]
Some equivalent words in other languages also derive from sources not originally pejorative, such as Bohemian nevestka, diminutive of nevesta "bride;" Dutch deern, German dirne originally "girl, lass, wench;" also perhaps Old French pute, perhaps literally "girl," fem. of Vulgar Latin *puttus (but perhaps rather from Latin putidus "stinking;" see poontang). Welsh putain "whore" is from French, probably via Middle English. Among other languages, Greek porne "prostitute" is related to pernemi "sell," with an original notion probably of a female slave sold for prostitution; Latin meretrix is literally "one who earns wages" (source of Irish mertrech, Old English miltestre "whore, prostitute").

The vulgar Roman word was scortum, literally "skin, hide." Another term was lupa, literally "she-wolf" (preserved in Spanish loba, Italian lupa, French louve; see wolf (n.)). And of course there was prostituta, literally "placed in front," thus "publicly exposed," from the fem. past participle of prostituere (see prostitute (n.)). Another Old Norse term was skækja, which yielded Danish skøge, Swedish sköka; probably from Middle Low German schoke, which is perhaps from schode "foreskin of a horse's penis," perhaps with the sense of "skin" (compare Latin scortum) or perhaps via an intermediary sense of "vagina." Spanish ramera, Portuguese ramiera are from fem. form of ramero "young bird of prey," literally "little branch," from ramo "branch." Breton gast is cognate with Welsh gast "bitch," of uncertain origin. Compare also strumpet, harlot.

Old Church Slavonic ljubodejica is from ljuby dejati "fornicate," a compound from ljuby "love" + dejati "put, perform." Russian bljad "whore" derives from Old Church Slavonic bladinica, from bladu "fornication." Polish nierządnica is literally "disorderly woman." Sanskrit vecya is a derivation of veca- "house, dwelling," especially "house of ill-repute, brothel." Another term, pumccali, means literally "one who runs after men." Avestan jahika is literally "woman," but only of evil creatures; another term is kunairi, from pejorative prefix ku- + nairi "woman."
yahoo (n.): "a brute in human form," 1726, from the race of brutish human creatures in Swift's "Gulliver's Travels." "A made name, prob. meant to suggest disgust" [Century Dictionary]. "Freq. in mod. use, a person lacking cultivation or sensibility, a philistine; a lout; a hooligan" [OED]. The internet search engine so called from 1994.
zoophilia (n.): "attraction to animals involving release of sexual energy," 1899, in a translation of Krafft-Ebing, from zoo- "animal" + -philia. "[F]ormerly not implying sexual intercourse or bestiality" [OED]. The meaning "sympathy or tender care for living creatures" is in the nativized formation zoophily (1886).
gogga: "An insect or creepy-crawly", Afrikaans, from Khoikhoi xo-xon, a collective term for slithering and creeping creatures.
aquaponics: "A system of aquaculture in which the waste produced by farmed fish or other aquatic creatures supplies the nutrients for plants grown hydroponically, which in turn purify the water", 1930s (in the sense 'hydroponics'): blend of aqua- and hydroponics.