英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

chow mein: chow mein: [20] Most Chinese culinary vocabulary in English arrived after World War II, but chow mein is part of an earlier influx, which was brought by Chinese-speakers who found themselves on the west coast of the USA in the early years of the 20th century. In the Cantonese (Guangdong) dialect it means literally ‘fried noodles’ – a minimalist description of a dish which usually also contains chopped meat and vegetables.
cinema: cinema: [20] The cinema is so named because it shows moving pictures. The Greek verb for ‘move’ was kīnein (source of English kinetic and, via the related Latin cīre, a range of -cite words, including excite, incite, and recite). Its noun derivative was kínēma ‘movement’, from which in 1896 Auguste and Louis Jean Lumière coined the French term cinématographe for their new invention for recording and showing moving pictures.

This and its abbreviated form cinéma soon entered English, the latter in 1909. In early years the graecized form kinema had some currency in English, but this had virtually died out by the 1940s.
=> cite, excite, kinetic, incite, recite
panorama: panorama: [18] The word panorama was coined in the late 1780s by an Irish artist called Robert Barker for a method he had invented for painting a scene on the inside of a cylinder in such a way that its perspective would seem correct to someone viewing it from inside the cylinder. He put his invention into practice in 1793 when he opened his ‘Panorama’, a large building in Leicester Square, London where the public could come and gaze at such all-encompassing scenes. By the early years of the 19th century the word (formed from the prefix pan- ‘all’ and Greek hórāma ‘view’, a derivative of horān ‘see’) had acquired all its modern extended meanings.
prime: prime: [OE] Latin prīmus ‘first’ came from an earlier *prīsmo-, which went back ultimately to Indo-European *pro ‘before, in front’ (ancestor also of English first). English first acquired it direct from Latin in the Anglo-Saxon period as an ecclesiastical term for the earliest of the canonical hours, and this is the source of the modern English noun uses of the word (as in ‘in one’s prime’).

The adjective prime was borrowed in the 14th century from Old French prime. English has a wide range of words that go back to derivatives of Latin prīmus, including premier [15], prim, primal [17], primary [15], primate [13], primitive [14], prince, principal, and principle. The trade-name Primus was first used for a sort of paraffin lamp in the early years of the 20th century.
=> first, premier, prim, primitive, prince, principle
scarper: scarper: [19] Scarper entered English in the mid- 19th century by way of the underworld slang of criminals, who probably got it from Italian scappare ‘get away’ (a relative of English escape). It remained a subcultural vocabulary item until the early years of the 20th century, and its rise in prominence then may have been partly due to the coincidental Cockney rhyming slang use of Scapa Flow (the name of a naval anchorage in the Orkney Islands) for ‘go’. Indeed, from the 1930s onwards scarper has often been spelled scarpa or even scapa.
admirable (adj.): mid-15c., "worthy of admiration," from Middle French admirable (Old French amirable), from Latin admirabilis "admirable, wonderful," from admirari "to admire" (see admiration). In early years it also carried a stronger sense of "awe-inspiring."
alarm (n.): early 14c., from Old French alarme (14c.), from Italian all'arme "to arms!" (literally "to the arms"). An interjection that came to be used as the word for the call or warning (compare alert). Extended 16c. to "any sound to warn of danger or to arouse." Weakened sense of "apprehension, unease" is from 1833. Variant alarum is due to the rolling -r- in the vocalized form. Sometimes in early years anglicized as all-arm. Alarm clock is attested from 1690s (as A Larum clock).
automobile (n.): "self-propelled motor vehicle," 1895, from French automobile, short for véhicule automobile (see automobile (adj.)). The modern Greek calls it autokineto "moved of itself." The French word had competition in the early years from locomobile; in English other early forms were motorcar and autocar. An electrical car was an electromobile (1899).
cheesecake (n.): also cheese-cake, mid-15c., from cheese (n.1) + cake (n.). In figurative uses for "soft, effeminate" from 18c. Slang meaning dates from 1934, when a "Time" magazine article defined it as "leg-pictures of sporty females." In its early years this sense of the word often was associated with Marlene Dietrich.
Prussian: 1550s (n.), 1560s (adj.), from Prussia + -an. Prussian blue pigment (1724) came to English from French bleu de Prusse, so called for being discovered in Berlin, the Prussian capital.
All in all, it seems that Prussian blue was synthesised for the first time around 1706 by the Swiss immigrant Johann Jacob Diesbach in Berlin. [Jens Bartoll and Bärbel Jackisch, "Prussian Blue: A Chronology of the Early Years," "Zeitschrift für Kunsttechnologie und Konservierung" 24, No. 1, 2010]
Early German sources refer to it as Preußisches Ultra-Marin and berliner blau. Prussic acid (1790), is from French acide prussique, so called in reference to prussian blue pigment, to which it is chemically related.
varnish (v.): late 14c.; see varnish (n.). Related: Varnished; varnishing. Century Dictionary defines varnishing day as "A day before the opening of a picture exhibition on which exhibitors have the privilege of retouching or varnishing their pictures after they have been placed on the walls." The custom is said to date to the early years of 19c.