quword 趣词
Word Origins Dictionary
- after



[after 词源字典] - after: [OE] In the first millennium AD many Germanic languages had forms cognate with Old English æfter (Gothic aftra, for example, and Old Norse aptr), but, with the exception of Dutch achter, none survive. It is not clear what their ultimate origin is, but the suffix they share may well be a comparative one, and it is possible that they derive from a Germanic base *af- (represented in Old English æftan ‘from behind’).
It has been suggested that this goes back to Indo-European *ap- (source of Latin ab ‘away, from’ and English of(f)), in which case after would mean literally ‘more off’ – that is, ‘further away’. Nautical aft is probably a shortening of abaft, formed, with the prefixes a- ‘on’ and be- ‘by’, from Old English æftan.
=> of, off[after etymology, after origin, 英语词源] - archetype




- archetype: [17] Archetype comes, via Latin archetypum, from Greek arkhétupon, a nominal use of the adjective arkhétupos, literally ‘firstmoulded’, from túpos ‘mould, model, type’. The Greek prefix arkhe- was based on the noun arkhos ‘chief, ruler’, a derivative of the verb arkhein ‘begin, rule’ (see ARCHIVES). It first entered our language (via Latin archi-) in the Old English period, as arce- (archbishop was an early compound formed with it); and it was reborrowed in the Middle English period from Old French arche-.
Its use has gradually extended from ‘highest in status’ and ‘first of its kind’ to ‘the ultimate – and usually the worst – of its kind’, as in archcraitor. Its negative connotations lie behind its eventual development, in the 17th century, into an independent adjective, first as ‘cunning, crafty’, later as ‘saucy, mischievous’. The same Greek root has provided English with the suffixes -arch and -archy (as in monarch, oligarchy); but here the original meaning of ‘ruling’ has been preserved much more stably.
=> archaic, archives - bag




- bag: [13] English acquired bag from Old Norse baggi ‘bag, bundle’, but it does not appear in any other Germanic language, which suggests that it may have been borrowed at some point from a non-Germanic language. Forms such as Old French bague, Italian baga, and Portuguese bagua show that it existed elsewhere. A derivative of the Old French word was bagage, from which in the 15th century English got baggage; and Italian baga may have led, by a doubling of diminutive suffixes, to bagatella ‘insignificant property, trifle’, which entered English in the 17th century via French bagatelle (although this has also been referred to Latin bacca ‘berry’ – see BACHELOR).
=> bagatelle, baggage - lavatory




- lavatory: [14] The notion of ‘washing’ was represented in prehistoric Indo-European by *lou-, which produced Greek loúein ‘wash’, English lather, and Latin lavāre ‘wash’. This last has been a fruitful source of English words, not all of them as obvious as lavatory, which originally meant simply ‘place or vessel for washing’ (its use for a ‘room containing a water closet’ appears to date from the 19th century).
Among its relatives are deluge [14], latrine [17] (from a contraction of Latin lavātrīna), laundry, lava [18] (from Italian lava, which originally denoted a ‘stream caused by sudden rain’), lavish [15] (from the metaphorical notion of an ‘outpouring’), and lotion [14]. And from Latin luere, the form taken on by lavāre after prefixes, we get ablution [14] and dilute [16]. Lavender [15] looks as though it should belong to the same family, but no actual connection has ever been demonstrated.
=> ablution, deluge, dilute, lather, latrine, laundry, lava, lavish, lotion - logarithm




- logarithm: [17] Greek lógos had a remarkably wide spread of meanings, ranging from ‘speech, saying’ to ‘reason, reckoning, calculation’, and ‘ratio’. The more ‘verbal’ end of its spectrum has given English the suffixes -logue and -logy (as in dialogue, tautology, etc), while the ‘reasoning’ component has contributed logic [14] (from the Greek derivative logiké), logistic [17] (from the Greek derivative logistikós ‘of calculation’), and logarithm, coined in the early 17th century by the English mathematician John Napier from Greek logós ‘ratio’ and arithmós ‘number’ (source of English arithmetic [13]).
=> arithmetic, logic, logistic - up




- up: [OE] Up is part of a widespread family of Germanic adverbs which also includes German auf, Dutch and Danish op, and Swedish upp. It goes back ultimately to Indo-European *up-, which also produced English over and the prefixes hyper- and super- and may lie behind English evil. To open something is etymologically to put it ‘up’.
=> open, over - a- (1)




- in native (derived from Old English) words, it most commonly represents Old English an "on" (see a (2)), as in alive, asleep, abroad, afoot, etc., forming adjectives and adverbs from nouns; but it also can be Middle English of, as in anew, abreast (1590s); or a reduced form of Old English past participle prefix ge-, as in aware; or the Old English intensive a-, as in arise, awake, ashame, marking a verb as momentary, a single event. In words from Romanic languages, often it represents Latin ad- "to, at."
[I]t naturally happened that all these a- prefixes were at length confusedly lumped together in idea, and the resultant a- looked upon as vaguely intensive, rhetorical, euphonic, or even archaic, and wholly otiose. [OED]
- beatnik (n.)




- coined 1958 by San Francisco newspaper columnist Herb Caen during the heyday of -nik suffixes in the wake of Sputnik. From Beat generation (1952), associated with beat (n.) in its meaning "rhythm (especially in jazz)" as well as beat (past participle adjective) "worn out, exhausted," but originator Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) in 1958 connected it with beatitude.
The origins of the word beat are obscure, but the meaning is only too clear to most Americans. More than the feeling of weariness, it implies the feeling of having been used, of being raw. It involves a sort of nakedness of the mind. ["New York Times Magazine," Oct. 2, 1952]
"Beat" is old carny slang. According to Beat Movement legend (and it is a movement with a deep inventory of legend), Ginsberg and Kerouac picked it up from a character named Herbert Huncke, a gay street hustler and drug addict from Chicago who began hanging around Times Square in 1939 (and who introduced William Burroughs to heroin, an important cultural moment). The term has nothing to do with music; it names the condition of being beaten down, poor, exhausted, at the bottom of the world. [Louis Menand, "New Yorker," Oct. 1, 2007]
- cablese (n.)




- 1895, from cable in the telegraphic sense + -ese as a language name suffix. "Since cablegrams had to be paid for by the word and even press rates were expensive the practice was to affix Latin prefixes and suffixes to make one word do the work of several" [Daniel Schorr], such as exLondon and Londonward to mean "from London," "to London" (non-Latin affixes also were used). Hence the tale, famous in the lore of the United Press International, of the distinguished but harried foreign correspondent who reached his breaking point and wired headquarters UPSTICK JOB ASSWARD. Its economy and expressive power fascinated Hemingway in his newspapering days.
- capsaicin




- from capsicum, from which it is extracted + chemical suffixes.
- chicken (n.)




- Old English cicen (plural cicenu) "young fowl," which by early Middle English had came to mean "young chicken," then later any chicken, from Proto-Germanic *kiukinam (cognates: Middle Dutch kiekijen, Dutch kieken, Old Norse kjuklingr, Swedish kyckling, German Küken "chicken"), from root *keuk- (echoic of the bird's sound and possibly also the root of cock (n.1)) + diminutive suffixes.
Applied to the young of other bird species from early 13c. Adjective sense of "cowardly" is at least as old as 14c. (compare hen-herte "a chicken-hearted person," mid-15c.). As the name of a game of danger to test courage, it is first recorded 1953. Chicken feed "paltry sum of money" is by 1897, American English slang; literal use (it is made from the from lowest quality of grain) by 1834. Chicken lobster "young lobster," is from c. 1960s, American English, apparently from chicken in its sense of "young." Generic words for "chicken" in Indo-European tend to be extended uses of "hen" words, as hens are more numerous among domestic fowl, but occasionally they are from words for the young, as in English and in Latin pullus. - -ee




- word-forming element in legal English (and in imitation of it), representing the Anglo-French -é ending of past participles used as nouns. As these sometimes were coupled with agent nouns in -or, the two suffixes came to be used as a pair to denote the initiator and the recipient of an action.
- fixative (adj.)




- 1640s, from fix (v.) + -ative, suffix meaning "of or related to; tending to." As a noun, from 1870, "that which fixes."
- ir-




- assimilated form of Latin prefixes in- (see in-) before -r-.
- -ling




- diminutive word-forming element, early 14c., from Old English -ling a nominal suffix (not originally diminutive), from Proto-Germanic *-linga-; attested in historical Germanic languages as a simple suffix, but probably representing a fusion of two suffixes: 1. that represented by English -el (1), as in thimble, handle; and 2. -ing, suffix indicating "person or thing of a specific kind or origin;" in masculine nouns also "son of" (as in farthing, atheling, Old English horing "adulterer, fornicator"), from PIE *-(i)ko- (see -ic).
Both these suffixes had occasional diminutive force, but this was only slightly evident in Old English -ling and its equivalents in Germanic languages except Norse, where it commonly was used as a diminutive suffix, especially in words designating the young of animals (such as gæslingr "gosling"). Thus it is possible that the diminutive use that developed in Middle English is from Old Norse. - over-




- word-forming element meaning "above; highest; across; too much; above normal; outer," from Old English ofer (see over). Over and its Germanic relations were widely used as prefixes, and sometimes could be used with negative force. This is rare in Modern English, but compare Gothic ufarmunnon "to forget," ufar-swaran "to swear falsely;" Old English ofercræft "fraud."
- parrel (n.)




- late 15c., "binding that fixes a yard to a mast," from parel "equipment" (c. 1400), earlier "apparel" (early 14c.), a shortening of apparel (n.).
- per (prep.)




- 1580s (earlier in various Latin and French phrases), from Latin per "through, during, by means of, on account of, as in," from PIE root *per- (1) "Base of prepositions and preverbs with the basic meanings of 'forward,' 'through,' and a wide range of extended senses such as 'in front of,' 'before,' 'early,' 'first,' 'chief,' 'toward,' 'against,' 'near,' 'at,' 'around'" [Watkins]. Cognates: Sanskrit pari- "around, about, through," pura "before, formerly;" Avestan pairi- "around," paro "before;" Old Persian pariy; Hittite para- "on, forth;" Greek peri "around, about, near, beyond," paros "before," para "from beside, beyond," pro "before;" Latin pro "before, for, on behalf of, instead of," porro "forward," prae "before;" Old English fore (prep.) "before, in front of;" (adv.) "before, previously;" German vor "for;" Old Church Slavonic pra-dedu "great-grandfather;" Russian pere- "through;" Lithuanian per "through;" Old Irish air- Gothic fair-, German ver-, Old English fer-, intensive prefixes.
- privative (adj.)




- 1580s, "expressing negation" (as do the prefixes un-, a- (2), etc.), from Latin privativus "denoting privation, negative," from privatus, past participle of privare (see private).
- -s (1)




- suffix forming almost all Modern English plural nouns, gradually extended in Middle English from Old English -as, the nominative plural and accusative plural ending of certain "strong" masculine nouns (such as dæg "day," nominative/accusative plural dagas "days"). The commonest Germanic declension, traceable back to the original PIE inflection system, it is also the source of the Dutch -s plurals and (by rhotacism) Scandinavian -r plurals (such as Swedish dagar).
Much more uniform today than originally; Old English also had a numerous category of "weak" nouns that formed their plurals in -an, and other strong nouns that formed plurals with -u. Quirk and Wrenn, in their Old English grammar, estimate that 45 percent of the nouns a student will encounter will be masculine, nearly four-fifths of them with genitive singular -es and nominative/accusative plural in -as. Less than half, but still the largest chunk.
The triumphs of -'s possessives and -s plurals represent common patterns in language: using only a handful of suffixes to do many jobs (such as -ing), and the most common variant squeezing out the competition. To further muddy the waters, it's been extended in slang since 1936 to singulars (such as ducks, sweets, babes) as an affectionate or diminutive suffix.
Old English single-syllable collectives (sheep, folk) as well as weights, measures, and units of time did not use -s. The use of it in these cases began in Middle English, but the older custom is preserved in many traditional dialects (ten pound of butter; more than seven year ago; etc.). - suspicion (n.)




- c. 1300, "act of suspecting; unverified conjecture of wrongdoing; mistrust, distrust," from Anglo-French suspecioun, corresponding to Old French suspicion, sospeçon "mistrust, suspicion" (Modern French soupçon), from Late Latin suspectionem (nominative suspectio) "mistrust, suspicion, fear, awe," noun of state from past participle stem of Latin suspicere "look up at" (see suspect (adj.)). Spelling in English influenced 14c. by learned Old French forms closer to Latin suspicionem. Used as a verb meaning "to suspect," it figures in literary representations of U.S. Western (Kentucky) slang from 1830s.
"Suspicion" words in other Indo-European languages also tend to be words for "think" or "look" with prefixes meaning "under, behind;" such as Greek hypopsia (hypo "under," opsis "sight"), hyponoia (noein "to think"); Lettish aizduomas (aiz "behind," duomat "think"); Russian podozrenie (Slavic podu "under," Old Church Slavonic zireti "see, look"); Dutch achterdocht (achter "behind," denken "to think"). - thing (n.)




- Old English þing "meeting, assembly, council, discussion," later "entity, being, matter" (subject of deliberation in an assembly), also "act, deed, event, material object, body, being, creature," from Proto-Germanic *thingam "assembly" (cognates: Old Frisian thing "assembly, council, suit, matter, thing," Middle Dutch dinc "court-day, suit, plea, concern, affair, thing," Dutch ding "thing," Old High German ding "public assembly for judgment and business, lawsuit," German Ding "affair, matter, thing," Old Norse þing "public assembly"). The Germanic word is perhaps literally "appointed time," from a PIE *tenk- (1), from root *ten- "stretch," perhaps on notion of "stretch of time for a meeting or assembly."
The sense "meeting, assembly" did not survive Old English. For sense evolution, compare French chose, Spanish cosa "thing," from Latin causa "judicial process, lawsuit, case;" Latin res "affair, thing," also "case at law, cause." Old sense is preserved in second element of hustings and in Icelandic Althing, the nation's general assembly.
Of persons, often pityingly, from late 13c. Used colloquially since c. 1600 to indicate things the speaker can't name at the moment, often with various meaningless suffixes (see thingamajig). Things "personal possessions" is from c. 1300. The thing "what's stylish or fashionable" is recorded from 1762. Phrase do your thing "follow your particular predilection," though associated with hippie-speak of 1960s is attested from 1841. - un- (1)




- prefix of negation, Old English un-, from Proto-Germanic *un- (cognates: Old Saxon, Old Frisian, Old High German, German un-, Gothic un-, Dutch on-), from PIE *n- (source of Sanskrit a-, an- "not," Greek a-, an-, Old Irish an-, Latin in-), comb. form of PIE root *ne "not" (cognates: Avestan na, Old Church Slavonic and Lithuanian ne "not," Latin ne "that not," Greek ne- "not," Old Irish ni, Cornish ny "not"). Often euphemistic (such as untruth for "lie").
The most prolific of English prefixes, freely and widely used in Old English, where it forms more than 1,000 compounds. It underwent a mass extinction in early Middle English, but emerged with renewed vigor 16c. to form compounds with native and imported words. It disputes with Latin-derived cognate in- (1) the right to form the negation of certain words (indigestable/undigestable, etc.), and though both might be deployed in cooperation to indicate shades of meaning (unfamous/infamous), typically they are not.
It also makes words from phrases (such as uncalled-for, c. 1600; undreamed-of, 1630s; uncome-at-able, 1690s; unputdownable, 1947, of a book; un-in-one-breath-utterable, Ben Jonson; etc., but the habit is not restricted to un-; such as put-up-able-with, 1812). As a prefix in telegramese to replace not and save the cost of a word, it is attested by 1936. - up-




- prefix with various senses, from Old English up (adv.), corresponding to similar prefixes in other Germanic languages.
- affixal




- "Designating an affix; relating to or involving an affix or affixes", Mid 19th cent. From affix + -al. Compare French affixal.
- Mr Fixit




- "A man who fixes something; especially a man who arranges matters or sets up deals (often illicitly)", 1920s.