英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

bird [bird 词源字典]: bird: [OE] Bird is something of a mystery word. It was not the ordinary Old English word for ‘feathered flying animal’; that was fowl. In Old English, bird meant specifically ‘young bird, nestling’. It did not begin to replace fowl as the general term until the 14th century, and the process took many hundreds of years to complete. Its source is quite unknown; it has no obvious relatives in the Germanic languages, or in any other Indo-European language.

The connotations of its original meaning have led to speculation that it is connected with breed and brood (the usual Old English form was brid, but the r and i subsequently became transposed in a process known as metathesis), but no convincing evidence for this has ever been advanced. As early as 1300, bird was used for ‘girl’, but this was probably owing to confusion with another similar Middle English word, burde, which also meant ‘young woman’.

The usage crops up from time to time in later centuries, clearly as an independent metaphorical application, but there does not really seem to be an unbroken chain of occurrences leading up to the sudden explosion in the use of bird for ‘young woman’ in the 20th century. Of other figurative applications of the word, ‘audience disapproval’ (as in ‘get the bird’) comes from the hissing of geese, and in ‘prison sentence’ bird is short for bird lime, rhyming slang for time.
[bird etymology, bird origin, 英语词源]
fledge: fledge: [16] The notion underlying fledge is the ‘ability to fly’. Historically, the idea of ‘having feathers’ is simply a secondary development of that underlying notion. The verb comes from an obsolete adjective fledge ‘feathered’, which goes back ultimately to a pre-historic West Germanic *fluggja (source also of German flügge ‘fledged’). This was derived from a variant of the base which produced English fly.

There is no immediate connection with fletcher ‘arrowmaker’ [14], despite the formal resemblance and the semantic connection with ‘putting feathered flights on arrows’, but further back in time there may be a link. Fletcher came from Old French flechier, a derivative of fleche ‘arrow’. A possible source for this was an unrecorded Frankish *fliugika, which, like fledge, could be traceable back to the same Germanic ancestor as that of English fly.
=> fly
pin: pin: [OE] Latin pinna (a probable relative of English fin) meant ‘wing, feather, pointed peak’. Amongst its derivatives were the diminutive pinnāculum, which has given English pinnacle [14] and, via French, panache [16] (which originally meant ‘plume of feathers’), pinnātus ‘feathered, winged’, source of English pinnate [18], and Vulgar Latin *pinniō, from which English gets pinion ‘wing’ [15]. Pinna itself was borrowed into Old English as pinn, and it was used for ‘peg’ (a sense which survives in various technical contexts); the application to a ‘small thin metal fastener’ did not emerge until the 14th century.

A pinafore [18] is etymologically a garment that is ‘pinned afore’, that is, ‘pinned to the front of a dress to protect it’.
=> fin, panache, pinafore, pinion, pinnacle
cigar (n.): 1730, from Spanish cigarro (source also of French cigare), probably from Maya sicar "to smoke rolled tobacco leaves," from si'c "tobacco;" or from or influenced by Spanish cigarra "grasshopper, cicada" (on resemblance of shape), from Vulgar Latin *cicala (source also of French cigale, Italian cigala). Cigar-box is from 1819; cigar-store from 1839; the wooden cigar-store Indian is from 1879, American English, but wooden images of feathered Indians or Negroes are mentioned outside tobacconists' shops in England by 1852, and are said to have been in earlier use on the Continent.
Blackamoors and other dark-skinned foreigners have always possessed considerable attractions as signs for tobacconists, and sometimes also for public-houses. Negroes, with feathered headdresses and kilts, smoking pipes, are to be seen outside tobacco shops on the Continent, as well as in England. [Jacob Larwood and John Camden Hotten, "The History of Signboards From the Earliest Times to the Present Day," London, 1867]
feather (v.): Old English fiðerian "to furnish with feathers or wings," from feðer (see feather (n.)). Meaning "to fit (an arrow) with feathers" is from early 13c.; that of "to deck, adorn, or provide with plumage" is from late 15c. In reference to oars (later paddles, propellers, etc.) from 1740, perhaps from the notion of the blade turned edgewise, or from the spray of the water as it falls off (compare nautical feather-spray, that produced by the cutwater of a fast vessel). The noun in reference to this is from the verb. Meaning "cut down to a thin edge" is from 1782, originally in woodworking. Phrase feather one's nest "enrich oneself" is from 1580s. Related: Feathered; feathering.
flamingo (n.): long-legged, long-necked brightly colored pink bird of the tropical Americas, 1560s, from Portuguese flamengo, Spanish flamengo, literally "flame-colored" (compare Greek phoinikopteros "flamingo," literally "red-feathered"), from Provençal flamenc, from flama "flame" (see flame (n.)) + Germanic suffix -enc "-ing, belonging to." Perhaps accommodated to words for Fleming (see flamenco).
fowl (n.): Old English fugel "bird, feathered vertebrate," from Proto-Germanic *fuglaz, the general Germanic word for "bird" (cognates: Old Saxon fugal, Old Frisian fugel, Old Norse fugl, Middle Dutch voghel, Dutch vogel, German vogel, Gothic fugls "a fowl, a bird"), perhaps a dissimilated form meaning literally "flyer," from PIE *pleuk- (see fly (v.1)).

Displaced in its original sense by bird (n.); narrower sense of "barnyard hen or rooster" (the main modern meaning) is first recorded 1570s; in U.S. this was extended to domestic ducks and geese.
goose (n.): "a large waterfowl proverbially noted, I know not why, for foolishness" [Johnson], Old English gos "a goose," from Proto-Germanic *gans- "goose" (cognates: Old Frisian gos, Old Norse gas, Old High German gans, German Gans "goose"), from PIE *ghans- (cognates: Sanskrit hamsah (masc.), hansi (fem.), "goose, swan;" Greek khen; Latin anser; Polish gęś "goose;" Lithuanian zasis "goose;" Old Irish geiss "swan"), probably imitative of its honking.
Geese are technically distinguished from swans and from ducks by the combination of feathered lores, reticulate tarsi, stout bill high at the base, and simple hind toe. [Century Dictionary]
Spanish ganso "goose" is from a Germanic source. Loss of "n" sound is normal before "s." Plural form geese is an example of i-mutation. Meaning "simpleton, silly or foolish person" is from early 15c. To cook one's goose first attested 1845, of unknown origin; attempts to connect it to Swedish history and Greek fables are unconvincing. Goose-egg "zero" first attested 1866 in baseball slang, from being large and round. The goose that lays golden eggs (15c.) is from Aesop.
javelin (n.): late 15c., from Middle French javeline (15c.), fem. diminutive of Old French javelot "a spear," probably from Gaulish (compare Old Irish gabul "fork;" Welsh gafl "fork," gaflach "feathered spear"), ultimately from PIE *ghabholo- "a fork, branch of a tree." Also found in Italian (giavelotto) and Middle High German (gabilot). Javelot also was borrowed in Middle English, but this is the form of the word that has endured.
pinnate (adj.): 1727, from Latin pinnatus "feathered, winged," from pinna "feather, wing" (see pin (n.)).
pennate: "(Of a diatom) bilaterally symmetrical", Mid 19th century: from Latin pennatus 'feathered, winged', from penna 'feather'.