quword 趣词
Word Origins Dictionary
- divorce (v.)



[divorce 词源字典] - late 14c., from Old French divorcer, from divorce (see divorce (n.)). Related: Divorced; divorcing.[divorce etymology, divorce origin, 英语词源]
- divorcee (n.)




- "divorced woman," 1813, from French divorcée, noun use of fem. past participle of divorcer (see divorce (v.)). The male equivalent in French is divorcé.
- grass widow (n.)




- 1520s, the earliest recorded sense is "mistress;" the allusion to grass is not clear, but it commonly was believed to refer to casual bedding (compare bastard and German Strohwitwe, literally "straw-widow," and compare the expression give (a woman) a grass gown "roll her playfully on the grass" (1580s), also euphemistic for the loss of virginity). Revived late 18c. as "one that pretends to have been married, but never was, yet has children;" in early 19c. use it could mean "married woman whose husband is absent" (and often presumed, but not certainly known to be, dead), also often applied to a divorced or discarded wife or an unmarried woman who has had a child. Both euphemistic and suggestive.
[G]rasse wydowes ... be yet as seuerall as a barbours chayre and neuer take but one at onys. [More, 1528]
GRASS WIDOW, s. a forsaken fair one, whose nuptials, not celebrated in a church, were consummated, in all pastoral simplicity, on the green turf. [Rev. Robert Forby, "Vocabulary of East Anglia," London, 1830]
- repudiate (v.)




- 1540s, "to cast off by divorce," from Latin repudiatus, past participle of repudiare "to cast off, put away, divorce, reject, scorn, disdain," from repudium "divorce, rejection, a putting away, dissolution of marriage," from re- "back, away" (see re-) + pudium, which is probably related to pes/ped- "foot" [Barnhart]. If this is so, the original notion may be of kicking something away, but folk etymology commonly connects it with pudere "cause shame to." Of opinions, conduct, etc., "to refuse to acknowledge," attested from 1824. Earliest in English as an adjective meaning "divorced, rejected, condemned" (mid-15c.). Related: Repudiated; repudiating.