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hay fever (n.)[hay fever 词源字典]: also hay-fever, 1825, from hay + fever. Also called summer catarrh (1828); not much noted before the 1820s, when it was sometimes derided as a "fashion" in disease.
People are apt to sneeze, in hot weather for example; and people do not die of sneezing now-a-days, as they did in days that no one knows any thing about. We cannot give six draughts a-day, at one and nine pence each, for sneezing: call it the hay-fever. What a wonderful man! what a clever man! he understands the hay-fever: call him in! Thus is the hay-fever among the last in the list of fashionables. ["On Fashions in Physic," London Magazine, October 1825]
[hay fever etymology, hay fever origin, 英语词源]
ilk (adj.): Old English ilca "same" (n. and adj.), from Proto-Germanic *ij-lik, in which the first element is from the PIE demonstrative particle *i- (see yon) and the second is that in Old English -lic "form" (see like). Of similar formation are which and such. Phrase of that ilk implies coincidence of name and estate, as in Lundie of Lundie; applied usually to families, so by c. 1790 it began to be used with meaning "family," then broadening to "type, sort."
natural (adj.): c. 1300, naturel, "of one's inborn character; hereditary, by birth;" early 14c. as "of the world of nature (especially as opposed to man)," from Old French naturel "of nature, conforming to nature; by birth," and directly from Latin naturalis "by birth, according to nature," from natura "nature" (see nature).

From late 15c. as "not miraculous, in conformity with nature." Meaning "easy, free from affectation" is attested from c. 1600. Of things, "not artificially created," c. 1600. As a euphemism for "illegitimate, bastard" (of children), it is first recorded c. 1400, on notion of blood kinship (but not legal status).

Natural science is from late 14c.; natural law is from early 15c. Natural order "apparent order in nature" is from 1690s. Natural childbirth first attested 1933. Natural life, usually in reference to the duration of life, is from late 15c. Natural history is from 1560s (see history). To die of natural causes is from 1570s.
starve (v.): Old English steorfan "to die" (past tense stearf, past participle storfen), literally "become stiff," from Proto-Germanic *sterban "be stiff" (cognates: Old Frisian sterva, Old Saxon sterban, Dutch sterven, Old High German sterban "to die," Old Norse stjarfi "tetanus"), from PIE root *ster- (1) "stiff, rigid" (see stereo-).

The conjugation became weak in English by 16c. The sense narrowed to "die of cold" (14c.); transitive meaning "to kill with hunger" is first recorded 1520s (earlier to starve of hunger, early 12c.). Intransitive sense of "to die of hunger" dates from 1570s. German cognate sterben retains the original sense of the word, but the English has come so far from its origins that starve to death (1910) is now common.