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fairy [fairy 词源字典]: fairy: [14] Fairy is an Old French coinage. It comes from Old French faerie, which meant ‘enchantment, magic’ and was derived from fae ‘fairy’ (source of English fay [14]). This in turn came from the Latin plural fāta, used in personifying the Fates, three goddesses who in ancient mythology governed human destiny. The original notion of the French noun survives in the mock-medieval term faerie (introduced by Edmund Spenser in his Faerie Queene 1590), but in fairy itself it has been gradually replaced by the meaning of the word from which it was originally derived – fay.
=> fable, fame, fate[fairy etymology, fairy origin, 英语词源]
fate: fate: [14] Etymologically, fate is ‘that which is spoken’ – that is, by the gods. Like so many other English words, from fable to profess, it goes back ultimately to the Indo-European base *bha- ‘speak’. Its immediate source was Italian fato, a descendant of Latin fātum, which was formed from the past participle of the verb fārī ‘speak’.

That which the gods say determines the destiny of human beings, and so Latin fātum came to signify ‘what is preordained, destiny’. It was used in the plural fāta to personify the Fates, the three goddesses who preside over human destiny – their direct etymological descendants in English have been diminished to fairies. The derivative fatal [14] comes from Latin fatālis, perhaps via Old French fatal.
=> confess, fable, fairy, profess
atropine (n.): 1836, from Latin atropa "deadly nightshade" (from which the alkaloid poison is extracted), from Greek atropos "inflexible," also the name of one of the Fates (see Atropos) + chemical suffix -ine (2).
Atropos: one of the Fates (the one who holds the shears and determines the manner of a person's death and cuts the thread), from Greek, "inflexible," literally "not to be turned away," from a- "not" (see a- (3)) + stem of trepein "to turn" (see trope). Related form Atropa was the Greek name for deadly nightshade.
Clotho: one of the three Fates, from Latin Clotho, from Greek Klotho, literally "the spinner," from klothein "to spin." The three Fates together sometimes were called Klothes "the spinners."
fado (n.): popular music style of Portugal, 1902, from Latin fatum "fate, destiny" (see fate (n.)). Because the songs tell the fates of their subjects.
fairy (n.): c. 1300, fairie, "the country or home of supernatural or legendary creatures; fairyland," also "something incredible or fictitious," from Old French faerie "land of fairies, meeting of fairies; enchantment, magic, witchcraft, sorcery" (12c.), from fae "fay," from Latin fata "the Fates," plural of fatum "that which is ordained; destiny, fate," from PIE *bha- "to speak" (see fame (n.)). Also compare fate (n.), also fay.
In ordinary use an elf differs from a fairy only in generally seeming young, and being more often mischievous. [Century Dictionary]
But that was before Tolkien. As a type of supernatural being from late 14c. [contra Tolkien; for example "This maketh that ther been no fairyes" in "Wife of Bath's Tale"], perhaps via intermediate forms such as fairie knight "supernatural or legendary knight" (c. 1300), as in Spenser, where faeries are heroic and human-sized. As a name for the diminutive winged beings in children's stories from early 17c.
Yet I suspect that this flower-and-butterfly minuteness was also a product of "rationalization," which transformed the glamour of Elfland into mere finesse, and invisibility into a fragility that could hide in a cowslip or shrink behind a blade of grass. It seems to become fashionable soon after the great voyages had begun to make the world seem too narrow to hold both men and elves; when the magic land of Hy Breasail in the West had become the mere Brazils, the land of red-dye-wood. [J.R.R. Tolkien, "On Fairy-Stories," 1947]
Hence, figurative adjective use in reference to lightness, fineness, delicacy. Slang meaning "effeminate male homosexual" is recorded by 1895. Fairy ring, of certain fungi in grass fields (as we would explain it now), is from 1590s. Fairy godmother attested from 1820. Fossil Cretaceous sea urchins found on the English downlands were called fairy loaves, and a book from 1787 reports that "country people" in England called the stones of the old Roman roads fairy pavements.
fay (n.): "fairy," late 14c., from Old French fae (12c., Modern French fée), from Vulgar Latin *fata "goddess of fate," fem. singular of Latin fata (neuter plural), literally "the Fates" (see fate (n.)). Adjective meaning "homosexual" is attested from 1950s.
hag (n.): early 13c., "repulsive old woman" (rare before 16c.), probably from Old English hægtes, hægtesse "witch, sorceress, enchantress, fury," shortened on the assumption that -tes was a suffix. The Old English word is from Proto-Germanic *hagatusjon, which is of unknown origin. Dutch heks, German Hexe "witch" are similarly shortened from cognate Middle Dutch haghetisse, Old High German hagzusa.

The first element probably is cognate with Old English haga "enclosure, portion of woodland marked off for cutting" (see hedge (n.)). Old Norse had tunriða and Old High German zunritha, both literally "hedge-rider," used of witches and ghosts. The second element in the prehistoric compound may be connected with Norwegian tysja "fairy; crippled woman," Gaulish dusius "demon," Lithuanian dvasia "spirit," from PIE *dhewes- "to fly about, smoke, be scattered, vanish."

One of the magic words for which there is no male form, suggesting its original meaning was close to "diviner, soothsayer," which were always female in northern European paganism, and hægtesse seem at one time to have meant "woman of prophetic and oracular powers" (Ælfric uses it to render the Greek "pythoness," the voice of the Delphic oracle), a figure greatly feared and respected. Later, the word was used of village wise women.

Haga is also the haw- in hawthorn, which is an important tree in northern European pagan religion. There may be several layers of folk etymology here. Confusion or blending with heathenish is suggested by Middle English hæhtis, hægtis "hag, witch, fury, etc.," and haetnesse "goddess," used of Minerva and Diana.

If the hægtesse once was a powerful supernatural woman (in Norse it is an alternative word for Norn, any of the three weird sisters, the equivalent of the Fates), it might originally have carried the hawthorn sense. Later, when the pagan magic was reduced to local scatterings, it might have had the sense of "hedge-rider," or "she who straddles the hedge," because the hedge was the boundary between the civilized world of the village and the wild world beyond. The hægtesse would have a foot in each reality. Even later, when it meant the local healer and root collector, living in the open and moving from village to village, it may have had the mildly pejorative Middle English sense of hedge- (hedge-priest, etc.), suggesting an itinerant sleeping under bushes. The same word could have contained all three senses before being reduced to its modern one.
Hobbit (n.): 1937, coined in the fantasy tales of J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973).
On a blank leaf I scrawled: 'In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.' I did not and do not know why. [Tolkien, letter to W.H. Auden, dated 1955]
The word also turns up in a very long list of folkloric supernatural creatures in the writings of Michael Aislabie Denham (d.1859), printed in volume 2 of "The Denham Tracts" [ed. James Hardy, London: Folklore Society, 1895], a compilation of Denham's scattered publications. Denham was an early folklorist who concentrated on Northumberland, Durham, Westmoreland, Cumberland, the Isle of Man, and Scotland.
What a happiness this must have been seventy or eighty years ago and upwards, to those chosen few who had the good luck to be born on the eve of this festival of all festivals; when the whole earth was so overrun with ghosts, boggles, bloody-bones, spirits, demons, ignis fatui, brownies, bugbears, black dogs, specters, shellycoats, scarecrows, witches, wizards, barguests, Robin-Goodfellows, hags, night-bats, scrags, breaknecks, fantasms, hobgoblins, hobhoulards, boggy-boes, dobbies, hob-thrusts, fetches, kelpies, warlocks, mock-beggars, mum-pokers, Jemmy-burties, urchins, satyrs, pans, fauns, sirens, tritons, centaurs, calcars, nymphs, imps, incubuses, spoorns, men-in-the-oak, hell-wains, fire-drakes, kit-a-can-sticks, Tom-tumblers, melch-dicks, larrs, kitty-witches, hobby-lanthorns, Dick-a-Tuesdays, Elf-fires, Gyl-burnt-tales, knockers, elves, rawheads, Meg-with-the-wads, old-shocks, ouphs, pad-foots, pixies, pictrees, giants, dwarfs, Tom-pokers, tutgots, snapdragons, sprets, spunks, conjurers, thurses, spurns, tantarrabobs, swaithes, tints, tod-lowries, Jack-in-the-Wads, mormos, changelings, redcaps, yeth-hounds, colt-pixies, Tom-thumbs, black-bugs, boggarts, scar-bugs, shag-foals, hodge-pochers, hob-thrushes, bugs, bull-beggars, bygorns, bolls, caddies, bomen, brags, wraiths, waffs, flay-boggarts, fiends, gallytrots, imps, gytrashes, patches, hob-and-lanthorns, gringes, boguests, bonelesses, Peg-powlers, pucks, fays, kidnappers, gallybeggars, hudskins, nickers, madcaps, trolls, robinets, friars' lanthorns, silkies, cauld-lads, death-hearses, goblins, hob-headlesses, bugaboos, kows, or cowes, nickies, nacks necks, waiths, miffies, buckies, ghouls, sylphs, guests, swarths, freiths, freits, gy-carlins Gyre-carling, pigmies, chittifaces, nixies, Jinny-burnt-tails, dudmen, hell-hounds, dopple-gangers, boggleboes, bogies, redmen, portunes, grants, hobbits, hobgoblins, brown-men, cowies, dunnies, wirrikows, alholdes, mannikins, follets, korreds, lubberkins, cluricauns, kobolds, leprechauns, kors, mares, korreds, puckles korigans, sylvans, succubuses, blackmen, shadows, banshees, lian-hanshees, clabbernappers, Gabriel-hounds, mawkins, doubles, corpse lights or candles, scrats, mahounds, trows, gnomes, sprites, fates, fiends, sibyls, nicknevins, whitewomen, fairies, thrummy-caps, cutties, and nisses, and apparitions of every shape, make, form, fashion, kind and description, that there was not a village in England that had not its own peculiar ghost. Nay, every lone tenement, castle, or mansion-house, which could boast of any antiquity had its bogle, its specter, or its knocker. The churches, churchyards, and crossroads were all haunted. Every green lane had its boulder-stone on which an apparition kept watch at night. Every common had its circle of fairies belonging to it. And there was scarcely a shepherd to be met with who had not seen a spirit!
[Emphasis added] It is curious that the name occurs nowhere else in folklore, and there is no evidence that Tolkien ever saw this. The word also was recorded from 1835 as "a term generally used in Wales to express a quantity made up of four Welsh pecks." Hobbitry attested from 1947.
Moira: fem. proper name, one of the Fates, from Greek Moira, literally "share, fate," related to moros "fate, destiny, doom," meros "part, lot," meiresthai "to receive one's share" (see merit (n.)).
Norn (n.): 1770, from Old Norse norn (plural nornir), one of the female fates of Scandinavian mythology, related to Swedish dialectal norna "to warn, to communicate secretly," perhaps ultimately imitative of low murmuring (compare Middle High German narren "to growl, snarl").
stamina (n.): 1670s, "rudiments or original elements of something," from Latin stamina "threads," plural of stamen (genitive staminis) "thread, warp" (see stamen). Sense of "power to resist or recover, strength, endurance" first recorded 1726 (originally plural), from earlier meaning "congenital vital capacities of a person or animal;" also in part from use of the Latin word in reference to the threads spun by the Fates (such as queri nimio de stamine "too long a thread of life"), and partly from a figurative use of Latin stamen "the warp (of cloth)" on the notion of the warp as the "foundation" of a fabric. Related: Staminal.
talaria (n.): "winged sandals of Hermes (Mercury)" and often other gods (Iris, Eros, the Fates and the Furies), 1590s, from Latin talaria, noun use of neuter plural of talaris "of the ankle," from talus "ankle" (see talus (n.1)).
weird (adj.): c. 1400, "having power to control fate, from wierd (n.), from Old English wyrd "fate, chance, fortune; destiny; the Fates," literally "that which comes," from Proto-Germanic *wurthiz (cognates: Old Saxon wurd, Old High German wurt "fate," Old Norse urðr "fate, one of the three Norns"), from PIE *wert- "to turn, to wind," (cognates: German werden, Old English weorðan "to become"), from root *wer- (3) "to turn, bend" (see versus). For sense development from "turning" to "becoming," compare phrase turn into "become."

The sense "uncanny, supernatural" developed from Middle English use of weird sisters for the three fates or Norns (in Germanic mythology), the goddesses who controlled human destiny. They were portrayed as odd or frightening in appearance, as in "Macbeth" (and especially in 18th and 19th century productions of it), which led to the adjectival meaning "odd-looking, uncanny" (1815); "odd, strange, disturbingly different" (1820). Related: Weirdly; weirdness.
Lachesis: "One of the three Fates", Greek, literally 'getting by lot'.