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henchman [henchman 词源字典]: henchman: [14] Early spellings such as hengestman and henxstman suggest that this word is a compound of Old English hengest ‘stallion’ and man ‘man’. There are chronological difficulties, for hengest seems to have gone out of general use in the 13th century, and henchman is not recorded until the mid-14th century, but it seems highly likely nevertheless that the compound must originally have meant ‘horse servant, groom’.

The word hengest would no doubt have remained alive in popular consciousness as the name of the Jutish chieftain Hengist who conquered Kent in the 5th century with his brother Horsa; it is related to modern German hengst ‘stallion’, and goes back ultimately to a prehistoric Indo-European kənku-, which denoted ‘jump’. Henchman remained in use for ‘squire’ or ‘page’ until the 17th century, but then seems to have drifted out of use, and it was Sir Walter Scott who revived it in the early 19th century, in the sense ‘trusty right-hand man’.
[henchman etymology, henchman origin, 英语词源]
wage: wage: [14] Wage and gage (as in engage) are doublets – that is to say, they come from the same ultimate source, but have drifted apart over the centuries. The source in this case was prehistoric Germanic *wathjam ‘pledge’, which is also the ancestor of English wedding. It was borrowed into Old French as gage, which is where English gets gage from; but its Anglo- Norman form was wage, which accounts for English wage. Gage, engage, and the derivative wager [14] all preserve to some degree the original notion of ‘giving a pledge or security’, but wage has moved on via ‘payment’ to ‘payment for work done’.
=> engage, gage, wager, wedding
wallop: wallop: [14] Wallop and gallop are doublets – that is to say, they began life as the same word, but have gradually drifted apart. Their ultimate common source was Frankish *walahlaupan ‘jump well’. This was a compound verb formed from *wala ‘well’ and *hlaupan ‘jump’, a relative of English leap. This was borrowed into Old French as galoper, which gave English gallop.

But the northern dialect of Old French took it over as waloper, which is where English wallop comes from. This was originally used for ‘gallop’ (‘Came there king Charlemagne, as fast as his horse might wallop’. William Caxton, Four Sons of Aymon 1489), but after the acquisition of gallop it began to go steadily downhill semantically, helped on its way perhaps by its sound, suggestive of hitting.
=> gallop
be-: word-forming element with a wide range of meaning: "thoroughly, completely; to make, cause seem; to provide with; at, on, to, for," from Old English be- "on all sides" (also used to make transitive verbs and as a privative or intensive prefix), from weak form of Old English bi "by," probably cognate with second syllable of Greek amphi, Latin ambi and originally meaning "about" (see ambi-).

This sense naturally drifted into intensive (as in bespatter "spatter about," therefore "spatter very much"). Be- can also be privative (as in behead), causative, or have just about any sense required. The prefix was productive 16c.-17c. in forming useful words, many of which have not survived, such as bethwack "to thrash soundly" (1550s), betongue "to assail in speech, to scold" (1630s).
bitter (adj.): Old English biter "bitter, sharp, cutting; angry, embittered; cruel," from Proto-Germanic *bitras- (cognates: Old Saxon bittar, Old Norse bitr, Dutch bitter, Old High German bittar, German bitter, Gothic baitrs "bitter"), from PIE root *bheid- "to split" (cognates: Old English bitan "to bite;" see bite (v.)). Evidently the meaning drifted in prehistoric times from "biting, of pungent taste," to "acrid-tasting." Used figuratively in Old English of states of mind and words. Related: Bitterly.
C: third letter of the alphabet. Alphabetic writing came to Rome via the southern Etruscan "Caeretan" script, in which gamma was written as a crescent. Early Romans made little use of Greek kappa and used gamma for both the "g" and "k" sounds, the latter more frequently, so that the "k" sound came to be seen as the proper one for gamma. To restore a dedicated symbol for the "g" sound, a modified gamma was introduced c. 250 B.C.E. as G. In classical Latin -c- has only the value "k," and thus it passed to Celtic and, via Irish monks, to Anglo-Saxon, where -k- was known but little used.

In Old French, many "k" sounds drifted to "ts" and by 13c., "s," but still were written with a -c-. Thus the 1066 invasion brought to the English language a more vigorous use of -k- and a flood of French and Latin words in which -c- represented "s" (as in cease, ceiling, circle). By 15c. native English words with -s- were being respelled with -c- for "s" (as in ice, mice, lice). In some words from Italian, meanwhile, the -c- has a "ch" sound (a sound evolution in Italian that parallels the Old French one).
cuckoo (n.): mid-13c., from Old French cocu "cuckoo," also "cuckold," echoic of the male bird's mating cry (compare Greek kokkyx, Latin cuculus, Middle Irish cuach, Sanskrit kokilas). Slang adjectival sense of "crazy" is American English, 1918, but noun meaning "stupid person" is recorded by 1580s, perhaps from the bird's unvarying, oft-repeated call. The Old English name was geac, cognate with Old Norse gaukr, source of Scottish and northern English gowk. The Germanic words presumably originally were echoic, too, but had drifted in form. Cuckoo clock is from 1789.
drift (v.): late 16c., from drift (n.). Figurative sense of "be passive and listless" is from 1822. Related: Drifted; drifting.
-ea-: digraph introduced early 16c., originally having the sound of long "a" and meant to distinguish words spelled -e- or -ee- with that sound from those with the sound of long "e"; for example break, great. Since c. 1700, the sound in some of them has drifted to long "e" (read, hear) or sometimes short "e" (bread, wealth).