英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

boulevard (n.): 1769, from French boulevard (15c.), originally "top surface of a military rampart," from a garbled attempt to adopt Middle Dutch bolwerc "wall of a fortification" (see bulwark) into French, which at that time lacked a -w- in its alphabet. The notion is of a promenade laid out atop demolished city walls, a way which would be much wider than urban streets. Originally in English with conscious echoes of Paris; since 1929, in U.S., used of multi-lane limited-access urban highways. Early French attempts to digest the Dutch word also include boloart, boulever, boloirque, bollvercq.
echo (n.): mid-14c., "sound repeated by reflection," from Latin echo, from Greek echo, personified in classical mythology as a mountain nymph who pined away for love of Narcissus until nothing was left of her but her voice, from or related to ekhe "sound," ekhein "to resound," from PIE *wagh-io-, extended form of root *(s)wagh- "to resound" (cognates: Sanskrit vagnuh "sound," Latin vagire "to cry," Old English swogan "to resound"). Related: Echoes. Echo chamber attested from 1937.
forego (v.): "to go before," Old English foregan "to go before," from fore- + go (v.). Related: Foregoer, foregoing; foregone. Similar formation in Dutch voorgaan, German vorgehen, Danish foregaa.

Phrase foregone conclusion echoes "Othello" [III.iii], but Shakespeare's sense was not necessarily the main modern one of "a decision already formed before the case is argued." Othello says it of Cassio's dream, and it is clear from the context that Othello means Cassio actually has been in bed with Desdemona before he allegedly dreamed it (the suspicion Iago is nourishing in him).
grotty (n.): slang shortening of grotesque, it had a brief vogue 1964 as part of the argot popularized by The Beatles in "A Hard Day's Night." It unconsciously echoes Middle English groti "muddy, slimy," from Old English grotig "earthy," from grot "particle."
inwit (n.): Middle English word meaning "conscience" (early 13c.), "reason, intellect" (c. 1300), from in (adv.) + wit (n.). Not related to Old English inwit, which meant "deceit." Joyce's use in "Ulysses" (1922), which echoes the 14c. work "Ayenbite of Inwyt," is perhaps the best-known example of the modern use of the word as a conscious archaism.
Þese ben also þy fyve inwyttys: Wyl, Resoun, Mynd, Ymaginacioun, and Thoght [Wyclif, c. 1380]

If ... such good old English words as inwit and wanhope should be rehabilitated (and they have been pushing up their heads for thirty years), we should gain a great deal. [Robert Bridges, 1922]
outpost (n.): 1757, "military position detached from the main body of troops," from out + post (n.2). Originally in George Washington's letters. Commercial sense of "trading settlement near a frontier" is from 1802. Phrase outpost of Empire (by 1895) in later use often echoes Kipling.
piece (n.): c. 1200, "fixed amount, measure, portion," from Old French piece "piece, bit portion; item; coin" (12c.), from Vulgar Latin *pettia, probably from Gaulish *pettsi (compare Welsh peth "thing," Breton pez "piece, a little"), perhaps from an Old Celtic base *kwezd-i-, from PIE root *kwezd- "a part, piece" (cognates: Russian chast' "part"). Related: Pieces.

Sense of "portable firearm" first recorded 1580s; that of "chessman" is from 1560s. Meaning "person regarded as a sex object" is first recorded 1785 (compare piece of ass, human beings colloquially called piece of flesh from 1590s; also compare Latin scortum "bimbo, anyone available for a price," literally "skin"). Meaning "a portion of a distance" is from 1610s; that of "literary composition" dates from 1530s. Piece of (one's) mind is from 1570s. Piece of work "remarkable person" echoes Hamlet. Piece as "a coin" is attested in English from 1570s, hence Piece of eight, old name for the Spanish dollar (c. 1600) of the value of 8 reals.
PIECE. A wench. A damned good or bad piece; a girl who is more or less active and skilful in the amorous congress. Hence the (Cambridge) toast, may we never have a PIECE (peace) that will injure the constitution. ["Dictionary of Buckish Slang, University Wit and Pickpocket Eloquence," London, 1811]
river (n.): early 13c., from Anglo-French rivere, Old French riviere "river, riverside, river bank" (12c.), from Vulgar Latin *riparia "riverbank, seashore, river" (source also of Spanish ribera, Italian riviera), noun use of fem. of Latin riparius "of a riverbank" (see riparian). Generalized sense of "a copious flow" of anything is from late 14c. The Old English word was ea "river," cognate with Gothic ahwa, Latin aqua (see aqua-). Romanic cognate words tend to retain the sense "river bank" as the main one, or else the secondary Latin sense "coast of the sea" (compare Riviera).

U.S. slang phrase up the river "in prison" (1891) is originally in reference to Sing Sing prison, which was literally "up the (Hudson) river" from New York City. Phrase down the river "done for, finished" perhaps echoes sense in sell down the river (1851), originally of troublesome slaves, to sell from the Upper South to the harsher cotton plantations of the Deep South.
scale (n.1): "skin plates on fish or snakes," c. 1300, from Old French escale "cup, scale, shell pod, husk" (12c., Modern French écale) "scale, husk," from Frankish *skala or some other Germanic source, from Proto-Germanic *skælo "split, divide" (cognates: Dutch schaal "a scale, husk," Old High German scala "shell," Gothic skalja "tile," Old English scealu "shell, husk"), from PIE root *(s)kel- (1) "to cut, cleave, split" (cognates: Latin culter "knife," scalpere "to cut, scrape;" Old Church Slavonic skolika "mussel, shell," Russian skala "rind, bark," Lithuanian skelti "split," Old English scell "shell," scalu "drinking cup, bowl, scale of a balance").

In reference to humans, as a condition of certain skin diseases, it is attested from c. 1400. As what falls from one's eye when blindness ends (usually figurative), it echoes Acts ix:18 (Latin tanquam squamæ, Greek hosei lepides).
toast (n.2): "piece of bread browned by fire or dry heat," early 15c., from toast (v.1); originally as something added to wine, ale, etc. From 17c. in the modern sense as something eaten on its own with a spread. Slang meaning "a goner, person or thing already doomed or destroyed" is recorded by 1987, perhaps from notion of computer circuits being "fried," and with unconscious echoes of earlier figurative phrase to be had on toast (1886) "to be served up for eating."
kittiwake: "A small gull that nests in colonies on sea cliffs, having a loud call that resembles its name", Early 17th century (originally Scots): imitative of its call. More cuckoo from Middle English:The cuckoo is one of those birds whose name echoes the sound of its distinctive call—other examples are curlew (Late Middle English), hoopoe (mid 17th century), kittiwake (mid 17th century), and peewit [E16th]. You can describe an unwelcome intruder in a place or situation as a cuckoo in the nest. This comes from the cuckoo's habit of laying her eggs to be raised in another bird's nest. Cuckold (Old English), referring to the husband of an unfaithful wife, also derives from cucu, and plays on the same cuckoo-in-the-nest idea, although it is not actually the husband who is being the ‘cuckoo’. The reason that a silly or mad person is described as a cuckoo, or is said to have gone cuckoo, is probably that the bird's monotonously repeated call suggests simple-mindedness. Kook, ‘an eccentric person’, is short for cuckoo. It was first recorded in the 1920s but only really became common in the late 1950s. See also cloud, coccyx