英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

defy [defy 词源字典]: defy: [14] The underlying notion of defy is of the renunciation of allegiance. It comes via Old French defier from a Vulgar Latin *disfidāre ‘renounce one’s faith’, a compound verb formed from the prefix dis-, denoting reversal, and Latin fīdus ‘trusting’. This adjective came from a lengthened variant of the stem which produced fidēs ‘faith’, source of English faith.

The word’s current main sense represents a slight shift from ‘being disloyal’ to actively ‘challenging someone’s power’. The verb’s noun derivative defiance [14], borrowed from Old French, has a first cousin in diffidence [15], originally ‘distrustfulness’, which came from the classical Latin compound verb diffidere ‘mistrust’.
=> diffidence, faith[defy etymology, defy origin, 英语词源]
faith: faith: [12] Faith comes ultimately from the prehistoric Indo-European *bhidh-, *bhoidh- (source also of English federal). It produced Latin fidēs ‘faith’, which lies behind a wide range of English words, including confide, defy, diffident (which originally meant ‘distrustful’), fealty [14], fidelity [15], fiduciary [17], and perfidy [16].

Its descendants in the Romance languages include Italian fede, Portuguese fé (as in auto-da-fé, literally ‘act of faith’, acquired by English in the 18th century), and Old French feid. This was pronounced much as modern English faith is pronounced, and Middle English took it over as feth or feith. (A later Old French form fei, foreshadowing modern French foi, produced the now defunct English fay [13]).
=> confide, defy, diffident, federal, fidelity, fiduciary, perfidy
suspect: suspect: [14] Latin suspicere originally meant literally ‘look up at’ (it was a compound verb formed from the prefix sub- ‘up from under’ and specere ‘look at’, source of English spectator, spy, etc). It evolved metaphorically along two lines: ‘look up to, admire’, which has since died out, and ‘look at secretly’, hence ‘look at distrustfully’, which has passed into English in the form of its past participial stem suspect-. Suspicion [14] comes from the medieval Latin derivative suspectiō.
=> expect, inspect, spectator, spy, suspicion
distrust: early 15c. (v.); 1510s (n.), from dis- + trust. "The etymologically correct form is mistrust, in which both elements are Teutonic" [Klein]. Related: Distrusted; distrusting; distrustful; distrustfully; distrustfulness.
suspect (adj.): early 14c., "suspected of wrongdoing, under suspicion;" mid-14c., "regarded with mistrust, liable to arouse suspicion," from Old French suspect (14c.), from Latin suspectus "suspected, regarded with suspicion or mistrust," past participle of suspicere "look up at, look upward," figuratively "look up to, admire, respect;" also "look at secretly, look askance at," hence, figuratively, "mistrust, regard with suspicion," from assimilated form of sub "up to" (see sub-) + specere "to look at" (see scope (n.1)). The notion behind the word is "look at secretly," hence, "look at distrustfully."