英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

Alzheimer [Alzheimer 词源字典]: Alzheimer: Alzheimer’s disease [20] This serious brain disorder was first described in a scientific journal in 1912, and was given its name in honour of the German neurologist Alois Alzheimer (1864–1915). For many decades the term was largely confined to specialist medical journals, but in the 1970s, as the disease became better known, it seeped into the public domain.
[Alzheimer etymology, Alzheimer origin, 英语词源]
Alzheimer's disease: Alzheimer's disease: [20] This serious brain disorder was first described in a scientific journal in 1912, and was given its name in honour of the German neurologist Alois Alzheimer (1864–1915). For many decades the term was largely confined to specialist medical journals, but in the 1970s, as the disease became better known, it seeped into the public domain.
cost: cost: [13] In Latin, something that cost a particular price literally ‘stood at or with’ that price. The Latin verb constāre was formed from the prefix com- ‘with’ and stāre ‘stand’ (a relative of English stand). In Vulgar Latin this became *costāre, which passed into English via Old French coster (the derived noun arrived first, the verb a couple of decades later). The adjective costly is a 14th century formation.
=> stand, statue
knickers: knickers: [19] The use of the word knickers for ‘women’s underpants’ dates back to the 1880s: a writer in the magazine Queen in 1882 recommended ‘flannel knickers in preference to flannel petticoat’, and Home Chat in 1895 was advertising ‘serge knickers for girls from twelve to sixteen’. Over the decades, of course, the precise application of the term has changed with the nature of the garment, and today’s legless briefs are a far cry from the knee-length ‘knickers’ of the 1880s.

They got their name because of their similarity to the original knickers, which were knee-length trousers for men (The Times in 1900 reported the ‘Imperial Yeomanry … in their well-made, loosely-fitting khaki tunics and riding knickers’). And knickers itself was short for knickerbockers, a term used for such trousers since the 1850s. This came from Diedrich Knickerbocker, a fictitious Dutch-sounding name invented by the American writer Washington Irving for the ‘author’ of his History of New York 1809.

The reason for the application seems to have been that the original knickerbockers resembled the sort of kneebreeches supposedly worn by Dutchmen.
censor (n.): 1530s, "Roman magistrate who took censuses and oversaw public morals," from Middle French censor and directly from Latin censor, from censere "to appraise, value, judge," from PIE root *kens- "speak solemnly, announce" (cognates: Sanskrit śamsati "recites, praises," śasa "song of praise").

There were two of them at a time in classical times, usually patricians, and they also had charge of public finances and public works. Transferred sense of "officious judge of morals and conduct" in English is from 1590s. Roman censor also had a transferred sense of "a severe judge; a rigid moralist; a censurer." Of books, plays (later films, etc.), 1640s. By the early decades of the 19c. the meaning of the English word had shaded into "state agent charged with suppression of speech or published matter deemed politically subversive." Related: Censorial.
hurricane (n.): 1550s, a partially deformed adoptation from Spanish huracan (Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, "Historia General y Natural de las Indias," 1547-9), furacan (in the works of Pedro Mártir De Anghiera, chaplain to the court of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella and historian of Spanish explorations), from an Arawakan (W. Indies) word. In Portuguese, it became furacão. For confusion of initial -f- and -h- in Spanish, see hacienda. The word is first in English in Richard Eden's "Decades of the New World":
These tempestes of the ayer (which the Grecians caule Tiphones ...) they caule furacanes.
OED records 39 different spellings, mostly from the late 16c., including forcane, herrycano, harrycain, hurlecane. Modern form became frequent from 1650, established after 1688. Shakespeare uses hurricano ("King Lear," "Troilus and Cressida"), but in reference to waterspouts.
iguana (n.): 1550s, from Spanish, from Arawakan (W.Indies) iguana, iwana, the local name for the lizard.
Foure footed beastes ... named Iuannas, muche lyke vnto Crocodiles, of eyght foote length, of moste pleasaunte taste. [Richard Eden, "Decades of the New World," 1555]
Magellanic clouds: 1680s, from Modern Latin Magellanicus, from Latinized name of Portuguese navigator Fernão de Magalhães (c. 1470-1521), the first European to round the tip of South America. He described them c. 1520, hence the name in Europe; but at least the larger of the two had been mentioned by Anghiera in 1515. In English they were earlier the Cape Clouds, because they became prominent as sailors neared the Cape of Good Hope; "but after Magellan became noted and fully described them they took and have retained his name." [Allen]
Coompasinge abowte the poynt thereof, they myght see throughowte al the heaven about the same, certeyne shynynge whyte cloudes here and there amonge the starres, like unto theym whiche are scene in the tracte of heaven cauled Lactea via, that is the mylke whyte waye. [Richard Eden, translation of "Decades of the New World," 1555]
post-modern (adj.): also post-modern, post modern, by 1919, in frequent use from 1949, from post- + modern.
But it has been only during the later decades of the modern era -- during that time interval that might fairly be called the post-modern era -- that this mechanistic conception of things has begun seriously to affect the current system of knowledge and belief; and it has not hitherto seriously taken effect except in technology and in the material sciences. [Thorstein Veblen, "The Vested Interests and the Common Man," 1919]

So much for the misapplied theory which has helped set the artist's nerves a-quiver and incited him to the extremes of post modern art, literary and other. [Wilson Follett, "Literature and Bad Nerves," "Harper's," June 1921]
Of architecture from 1940s; specific sense in the arts emerged 1960s (see postmodernism).
-ty (1): suffix representing "ten" in cardinal numbers that are multiples of 10 (sixty, seventy, etc.), from Old English -tig, from a Germanic root (cognates: Old Saxon, Dutch -tig, Old Frisian -tich, Old Norse -tigr, Old High German -zug, German -zig) that existed as a distinct word in Gothic (tigjus) and Old Norse (tigir) meaning "tens, decades." Compare tithe (n.).

English, like many other Germanic languages, retains traces of a base-12 number system. The most obvious instance is eleven and twelve which ought to be the first two numbers of the "teens" series. Their Old English forms, enleofan and twel(eo)f(an), are more transparent: "leave one" and "leave two."

Old English also had hund endleofantig for "110" and hund twelftig for "120." One hundred was hund teantig. The -tig formation ran through 12 cycles, and could have bequeathed us numbers *eleventy ("110") and *twelfty ("120") had it endured, but already during the Anglo-Saxon period it was being obscured.

Old Norse used hundrað for "120" and þusend for "1,200." Tvauhundrað was "240" and þriuhundrað was "360." Older Germanic legal texts distinguished a "common hundred" (100) from a "great hundred" (120). This duodecimal system is "perhaps due to contact with Babylonia" [Lass, "Old English"].
tar (v.): late Old English, "to smear with tar," from tar (n.1). To tar and feather (1769) was famously a mob action in America in Revolutionary times (used by both sides) and several decades thereafter. The punishment itself first is found in an ordinance of Richard I (1189) as the penalty in the Crusader navy for theft. Among other applications over the years was its use in 1623 by a bishop on "a party of incontinent friars and nuns" [OED], but the verbal phrase is not attested until 18c. Related: Tarred; tarring.
week (n.): Old English wucu, wice, etc., from Proto-Germanic *wikon (cognates: Old Norse vika, Old Frisian wike, Middle Dutch weke, Old High German wecha, German woche), probably originally with the sense of "a turning" or "succession" (compare Gothic wikon "in the course of," Old Norse vika "sea-mile," originally "change of oar," Old English wican "yield, give way"), from PIE root *weik- (4) "to bend, wind" (see vicarious). The vowel sound seems to have been uncertain in Old and Middle English and -e-, -i-, -o-, -u-, -y-, and various diphthongs are attested for it.

"Meaning primarily 'change, alteration,' the word may once have denoted some earlier time division, such as the 'change of moon, half month,' ... but there is no positive evidence of this" [Buck]. No evidence of a native Germanic week before contact with the Romans. The seven-day week is ancient, probably originating from the 28-day lunar cycle, divisible into four periods of seven day, at the end of each of which the moon enters a new phase. Reinforced during the spread of Christianity by the ancient Jewish seven-day week.

As a Roman astrological convention it was borrowed by other European peoples; the Germanic tribes substituting their own deities for those of the Romans, without regard to planets. The Coligny calendar suggests a Celtic division of the month into halves; the regular Greek division of the month was into three decades; and the Romans also had a market week of nine days.
Greek planetary names [for the days of the week] ... are attested for the early centuries of our era, but their use was apparently restricted to certain circles; at any rate they never became popular. In Rome, on the other hand, the planetary names became the established popular terms, too strongly intrenched to be displaced by the eccl[esiastical] names, and spreading through most of western Europe. [Buck]
Phrase a week, as in eight days a week recorded by 1540s; see a- (1).
Adelphi: "Attributive Designating plays performed at or in a style characteristic of the Adelphi Theatre in London, especially (in early use, chiefly in Adelphi screamer) a type of broad comedy or farce; (later) a type of melodrama which was prevalent in the last decades of the 19th cent., typically with the dialogue written in a literary rather than natural, conversational style", Mid 19th cent.; earliest use found in Edinburgh Literary Journal. From Adelphi, the name of a London theatre in the vicinity of, and named after, a group of neoclassical terrace houses between the Strand and the Thames, designed by the Adam brothers from ancient Greek ἀδελϕοί, plural of ἀδελϕός brother.