英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

fornication [fornication 词源字典]: fornication: [13] Latin fornix denoted an ‘arch’ or ‘vault’, and hence came to be used in the late republican period for the sort of vaulted underground dwellings where the dregs of Roman society – tramps, prostitutes, petty criminals, etc – lived. Early Christian writers homed in on the prostitutes, and employed the term with the specific meaning ‘brothel’, whence the verb fornicārī ‘have illicit sexual intercourse’ and its derivative fornicatiō, source of English fornication.
[fornication etymology, fornication origin, 英语词源]
mews: mews: [14] In former times, a mew was a place where trained falcons were kept (etymologically the word means ‘moulting-place’; it came from Old French mue, a derivative of muer ‘moult’, which was descended from Latin mūtāre ‘change’). In the latter part of the 14th century the Royal Mews were built in London on the site of what is now Trafalgar Square, to house the royal hawks.

By Henry VII’s time they were being used as stables, and from at least the early 17th century the term mews was used for ‘stabling around an open yard’. The modern application to a ‘street of former stables converted to human dwellings’ dates from the early 19th century.
=> moult, mutate
town: town: [OE] The ancestral meaning of town is ‘enclosed place’ – amongst its relatives are German zaun ‘hedge, fence’ and Old Irish dūn ‘fort, camp, fortified place’. Its Old English forerunner tūn was used for an ‘enclosure’ or ‘yard’, and also for a ‘building or set of buildings within an enclosure’, hence a ‘farm’. This in due course evolved to a ‘cluster of dwellings’, and by the 12th century the modern English sense of the word was in place (the standard Old English term for ‘town’ was burg, ancestor of modern English borough).

The -ton ending of English place-names goes back in many cases to a time when the word meant ‘farmstead’.
borough (n.): Old English burg, burh "a dwelling or dwellings within a fortified enclosure," from Proto-Germanic *burgs "hill fort, fortress" (cognates: Old Frisian burg "castle," Old Norse borg "wall, castle," Old High German burg, buruc "fortified place, citadel," German Burg "castle," Gothic baurgs "city"), from PIE root *bhergh- (2) "high," with derivatives referring to hills, hill forts, fortified elevations (source also of Old English beorg "hill;" see barrow (n.2)).

In German and Old Norse, chiefly as "fortress, castle;" in Gothic, "town, civic community." Meaning shifted in Middle English from "fortress," to "fortified town," to simply "town" (especially one possessing municipal organization or sending representatives to Parliament). In U.S. (originally Pennsylvania, 1718) often an incorporated town; in Alaska, however, it is the equivalent of a county. The Scottish form is burgh. The Old English dative singular byrig survives in many place names as -bury.
street (n.): Old English stret (Mercian, Kentish), stræt (West Saxon) "street, high road," from Late Latin strata, used elliptically for via strata "paved road," from fem. past participle of Latin sternere "lay down, spread out, pave," from PIE *stre-to- "to stretch, extend," from root *stere- "to spread, extend, stretch out" (see structure (n.)).

One of the few words in use in England continuously from Roman times. An early and widespread Germanic borrowing (Old Frisian strete, Old Saxon strata, Middle Dutch strate, Dutch straat, Old High German straza, German Strasse, Swedish stråt, Danish sträde "street"). The Latin is also the source of Spanish estrada, Old French estrée, Italian strada.

"The normal term in OE for a paved way or Roman road, later extended to other roads, urban streets, and in SE dialects to a street of dwellings, a straggling village or hamlet" [Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names]. Originally of Roman roads (Watling Street, Icknield Street). "In the Middle Ages, a road or way was merely a direction in which people rode or went, the name street being reserved for the made road" [Weekley].

Used since c. 1400 to mean "the people in the street;" modern sense of "the realm of the people as the source of political support" dates from 1931. The street for an especially important street is from 1560s (originally of London's Lombard-street). Man in the street "ordinary person, non-expert" is attested from 1831. Street people "the homeless" is from 1967; expression on the street "homeless" is from 1852. Street smarts is from 1971; street-credibility is from 1979. Street-sweeper as an occupation is from 1848.
Warwickshire: 11c., from Old English Wærincwicum + scir "district." The first element means "dwellings by the weir or river-dam," from *wæring + wic (see wick (2)).
wick (n.2): "dairy farm," now surviving, if at all, as a localism in East Anglia or Essex, it was once the common Old English wic "dwelling place, lodging, house, mansion, abode," then coming to mean "village, hamlet, town," and later "dairy farm" (as in Gatwick "Goat-farm"). Common in this latter sense 13c.-14c. The word is from a general Germanic borrowing from Latin vicus "group of dwellings, village; a block of houses, a street, a group of streets forming an administrative unit" (see vicinity). Compare Old High German wih "village," German Weichbild "municipal area," Dutch wijk "quarter, district," Old Frisian wik, Old Saxon wic "village."