quword 趣词
Word Origins Dictionary
- cringe
- cringe: [13] Like crank, cringe appears to come ultimately from a prehistoric Germanic base *krank- whose original meaning was ‘bend’ or ‘curl up’. This produced an Old English verb crincan ‘fall in battle, yield’ (the association of ‘curling up’ and ‘dying’ is obvious), probable ancestor of modern English crinkle [14]. Crincan does not itself seem to be the source of cringe, which until the 16th century was usually spelled crenge or crench; to explain these eforms it is necessary to postulate *crencean, an unrecorded Old English causative derivative of crincan, meaning ‘cause to curl up’.
=> crank, crinkle - mime
- mime: [17] Greek mimos meant ‘imitator’, and hence ‘actor’. English took it over via Latin mīmus, and lost no time in turning it into a verb. The derived Greek adjective mīmikós has given English mimic [16], and other related forms include mimeograph [19], so called because it copies things, and mimosa [18], named from its tendency to curl up when touched, as if in ‘imitation’ of animal behaviour. The compound pantomime means etymologically ‘complete mime’.
=> mimeograph, mimosa, pantomime - cringe (v.)
- early 13c., from causative of Old English cringan "give way, fall (in battle), become bent," from Proto-Germanic *krank- "bend, curl up" (cognates: Old Norse kringr, Dutch kring, German Kring "circle, ring"). Related: Cringed; cringing. As a noun from 1590s.
- crumpet (n.)
- 1690s, perhaps from crompid cake "wafer," literally "curled-up cake" (1382; Wyclif's rendering of Hebrew raqiq in Ex. 29:23), from crompid, past participle of crumpen "curl up." Alternative etymology is from Celtic (compare Breton krampoez "thin, flat cake"). Slang meaning "woman regarded as a sex object" is first recorded 1936.
- crumple (v.)
- c. 1300, crumplen, frequentative of crumpen "to curl up" (from Old English crump "bent, crooked"). Related: Crumpled; crumpling.
- lump (v.1)
- early 15c., "to curl up in a ball, to gather into a lump" (implied in lumped), from lump (n.). Meaning "to put together in one mass or group" is from 1620s. Related: Lumped; lumping.