英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

affray: affray: [14] Affray is a word of mixed Germanic and Romance origin. The noun comes from the verb, ‘alarm’ (now obsolete, but still very much with us in the form of its past participle, afraid), which was borrowed into English from Anglo- Norman afrayer and Old French effreer and esfreer. These go back to a hypothetical Vulgar Latin verb *exfridāre, which was composed of the Latin prefix ex- ‘out’ and an assumed noun *fridus, which Latin took from the Frankish *frithuz ‘peace’ (cognate with German friede ‘peace’, and with the name Frederick). The underlying meaning of the word is thus ‘take away someone’s peace’.
=> afraid, belfry
affront: affront: [14] The present-day notion of ‘insulting someone’ has replaced the more direct action of hitting them in the face. Affront comes, via Old French afronter, from Vulgar Latin *affrontāre ‘strike in the face’, which was formed from the Latin phrase ad frontem, literally ‘to the face’.
=> front
alfresco: alfresco: see fresh
belfry: belfry: [13] Etymologically, belfry has nothing to do with bells; it was a chance similarity between the two words that led to belfry being used from the 15th century onwards for ‘bell-tower’. The original English form was berfrey, and it meant ‘movable seige-tower’. It came from Old French berfrei, which in turn was borrowed from a hypothetical Frankish *bergfrith, a compound whose two elements mean respectively ‘protect’ (English gets bargain, borough, borrow, and bury from the same root) and ‘peace, shelter’ (hence German friede ‘peace’); the underlying sense of the word is thus the rather tautological ‘protective shelter’.

A tendency to break down the symmetry between the two rs in the word led in the 15th century to the formation of belfrey in both English and French (l is phonetically close to r), and at around the same time we find the first reference to it meaning ‘bell-tower’, in Promptorium parvulorum 1440, an early English-Latin dictionary: ‘Bellfray, campanarium’.
=> affray, bargain, borrow, borough, bury, neighbour
comfrey: comfrey: see fervent
effrontery: effrontery: [18] The notion of ‘audacity’ or ‘impudence’ is often expressed in terms of ‘exposing or pushing forward the face’: a ‘barefaced lie’ or ‘putting on a bold front’, for instance. And effrontery is no exception. It comes ultimately from late Latin effrōns ‘barefaced, shameless’, a compound adjective formed from the prefix ex- ‘out of’ and frōns ‘forehead’ (source of English front).

This seems subsequently to have been reformulated along the lines of its original components, giving Vulgar Latin *exfrontātus, source of Old French esfronte. This in turn developed to French effronté, whose derived noun effronterie was acquired by English as effrontery.
=> front
fraction: fraction: [14] Like fracture [15], which preserves its etymological meaning more closely, fraction comes ultimately from fractus, the past participle of Latin frangere ‘break’. This verb goes back to prehistoric Indo-European *bhr(e)g-, which also produced English break. The Latin derived noun fractiō simply meant ‘breaking’, particularly with reference to the breaking of Communion bread, but all trace of this literal sense has now virtually died out in English, leaving only the mathematical sense ‘number produced by division’ and its metaphorical offshoots.

Amongst the English meanings that have disappeared is ‘discord, quarrelling’, but before it went it produced fractious [18].
=> fracture, fragile, frail
fragile: fragile: [17] Fragile and frail [13] are doublets: that is to say, they have the same ultimate source but have evolved in different ways. In this case the source was Latin fragilis ‘breakable’, a derivative of the same base (*frag-) as produced frangere ‘break’ (whence English fractious). Fragile was acquired either directly from the Latin adjective or via French fragile, but frail passed through Old French frale or frele on its way to English. Other English words to come from *frag- include fragment [15] (from Latin fragmentum) and saxifrage, literally ‘rockbreaker’.
=> fraction, fracture, fragment, frail, saxifrage
frame: frame: [OE] Frame comes from the preposition from, whose underlying notion is of ‘forward progress’. This was incorporated into a verb framian in Old English times, which meant ‘make progress’. Its modern meaning started to develop in the early Middle English period, from ‘prepare, make ready’, via the more specific ‘prepare timber for building’, to ‘construct, shape’ (the Middle English transitive uses may have been introduced by the related Old Norse fremija).

The noun frame was derived from the verb in the 14th century. Incidentally, if the connection between from and frame should seem at first sight far-fetched, it is paralleled very closely by furnish, which came from the same prehistoric Germanic source as from.
=> from
franc: franc: see frank
franchise: franchise: [13] Originally, franchise meant ‘freedom’ (as it still does in French today): ‘We will for our franchise fight and for our land’, Robert of Gloucester’s Chronicle 1297. Gradually, though, it became more specialized in sense, narrowing down via ‘particular legal privilege’ to (in the 18th century) ‘right to vote’. It comes from Old French franchise, a derivative of franc ‘free’ (whence English frank).
=> frank
frank: frank: [13] To call someone frank is to link them with the Germanic people who conquered Gaul around 500 AD, the Franks, who gave their name to modern France and the French. After the conquest, full political freedom was granted only to ethnic Franks or to those of the subjugated Celts who were specifically brought under their protection. Hence, franc came to be used as an adjective meaning ‘free’ – a sense it retained when English acquired it from Old French: ‘He was frank and free born in a free city’, John Tiptoft, Julius Caesar’s commentaries 1470.

In both French and English, however, it gradually progressed semantically via ‘liberal, generous’ and ‘open’ to ‘candid’. Of related words in English, frankincense [14] comes from Old French franc encens, literally ‘superior incense’ (‘superior’ being a now obsolete sense of French franc), and franc [14], the French unit of currency, comes from the Latin phrase Francorum rex ‘king of the Franks’, which appeared on the coins minted during the reign of Jean le Bon (1350–64).

The Franks, incidentally, supposedly got their name from their preferred weapon, the throwing spear, in Old English franca.
=> french
frantic: frantic: [14] Frantic comes via Old French frenetique and Latin phreneticus from late Greek phrenētikús, a derivative of phrenítis ‘delirium’. This in turn was based on Greek phrén ‘mind’ (source also of English phrenology ‘study of cranial bumps to determine intelligence, character, etc’ [19]). The Old French form split into two virtually distinct words once English got hold of it: in one, the French three-syllable form was preserved, and even partially remodelled on its Latin ancestor, to give what has become modern English phrenetic, while in the other it was reduced to frentik which, for reasons that have never been satisfactorily explained, subsequently became frantic.

The related noun frenzy [14] retains the original vowel.
=> frenzy, phrenology
fraternal: fraternal: [15] Etymologically as well as semantically, fraternal is ‘brotherly’. It comes from frāternālis, a medieval Latin derivative of Latin frāter ‘brother’. This goes back to the same prehistoric Indo-European source, *bhrāter, as produced English brother. The Latin accusative from, frātrem, produced French frère ‘brother’, from which English gets friar [13].
=> brother, friar, pal
fraud: fraud: see frustrate
fraught: fraught: [14] Fraught and freight [15] are related, and share the underlying meaning ‘load’. But whereas freight has stayed close to its semantic roots, fraught, which started out as ‘laden’, has moved on via ‘supplied or filled with something’ to specifically ‘filled with anxiety or tension’. It was originally the past participle of a now obsolete verb fraught ‘load a ship’, which was borrowed from Middle Dutch vrachten.

This in turn was a derivative of the noun vracht ‘load, cargo’, a variant of vrecht (from which English gets freight). Both vracht and vrecht probably go back to a prehistoric Germanic noun *fraaikhtiz, whose second element *-aikhtiz is related to English owe and own.
=> freight
free: free: [OE] The prehistoric ancestor of free was a term of affection uniting the members of a family in a common bond, and implicitly excluding their servants or slaves – those who were not ‘free’. It comes ultimately from Indo- European *prijos, whose signification ‘dear, beloved’ is revealed in such collateral descendants as Sanskrit priyás ‘dear’, Russian prijatel’ ‘friend’, and indeed English friend.

Its Germanic offspring, *frijaz, displays the shift from ‘affection’ to ‘liberty’, as shown in German frei, Dutch vrij, Swedish and Danish fri, and English free. Welsh rhydd ‘free’ comes from the same Indo-European source.
=> friday, friend
freebooter: freebooter: see filibuster
freeze: freeze: [OE] Freeze is an ancient word, which traces its history back to Indo-European *preus- (source also of Latin pruīna ‘hoarfrost’). Its Germanic descendant was *freusan, from which come German frieren, Dutch vriezen, Swedish frysa, and English freeze. The noun frost [OE] was formed in the prehistoric Germanic period from a weakly stressed variant of the base of *freusan plus the suffix -t.
=> frost
freight: freight: see fraught
frenzy: frenzy: see frantic
frequent: frequent: [16] Frequent comes from Latin frequēns, which meant ‘crowded’ as well as ‘regularly repeated’ (it is not known what the origins of frequēns were, although it may be related to Latin farcīre ‘stuff’, source of English farce). The sense ‘crowded’ was carried over into English along with ‘regularly repeated’, but it had virtually died out by the end of the 18th century. The verb frequent [15] goes back to Latin frequentāre ‘visit frequently or regularly’.
fresh: fresh: [12] Fresh is of Germanic origin, but in its present form reached English via French. Its ultimate source was the prehistoric Germanic adjective *friskaz, which also produced German frisch, Dutch vers, Swedish färsk, and possibly English frisk [16]. It was borrowed into the common source of the Romance languages as *friscus, from which came French frais and Italian and Spanish fresco (the Italian form gave English fresco [16], painting done on ‘fresh’ – that is, still wet – plaster, and alfresco [18], literally ‘in the fresh air’).

English acquired fresh from the Old French predecessor of frais, freis. The colloquial sense ‘making presumptuous sexual advances’, first recorded in the USA in the mid 19th century, probably owes much to German frech ‘cheeky’.
=> alfresco, fresco, frisk
fret: fret: English has three separate words fret. Fret ‘irritate, distress’ [OE] goes back to a prehistoric Germanic compound verb formed from the intensive prefix *fra- and the verb *etan (ancestor of English eat), which meant ‘eat up, devour’. Its modern Germanic descendants include German fressen ‘eat’ (used of animals). In Old English, it gave fretan, which also meant ‘devour’, but this literal meaning had died out by the early 15th century, leaving the figurative ‘gnaw at, worry, distress’. Fret ‘decorate with interlaced or pierced design’ [14] (now usually encountered only in fretted, fretwork, and fretsaw) comes from Old French freter, a derivative of frete ‘trellis, embossed or interlaced work’, whose origins are obscure.

Also lost in the mists of time are the antecedents of fret ‘ridge across the fingerboard of a guitar’ [16].
=> eat
friar: friar: see fraternal
Friday: Friday: [OE] Friday was named for Frigg, in Scandinavian mythology the wife of Odin and goddess of married love and of the hearth (Frigg, or in Old English Frīg, is thought to have come from prehistoric Germanic *frijaz ‘noble’, source of English free). ‘Frigg’s day’ was a direct adaptation of Latin Veneris dies ‘Venus’s day’ (whence French vendredi ‘Friday’), which in turn was based on Greek Aphrodítēs hēméra ‘Aphrodite’s day’.
=> free
friend: friend: [OE] Etymologically, friend means ‘loving’. It and its Germanic relatives (German freund, Dutch vriend, Swedish frände, etc) go back to the present participle of the prehistoric Germanic verb *frijōjan ‘love’ (historically, the German present participle ends in -nd, as in modern German -end; English -ng is an alteration of this). *Frijōjan itself was a derivative of the adjective *frijaz, from which modern English gets free, but which originally meant ‘dear, beloved’.
=> free
frieze: frieze: [16] Phrygia, in western and central Asia Minor, was noted in ancient times for its embroidery. Hence classical Latin Phrygium ‘of Phrygia’ was pressed into service in medieval Latin (as frigium, or later frisium) for ‘embroidered cloth’. English acquired the word via Old French frise, by which time it had progressed semantically via ‘fringe’ to ‘decorative band along the top of a wall’.
fright: fright: [OE] Prehistoric Germanic *furkhtaz, an adjective of unknown origin (not related to English fear), meant ‘afraid’. From it was derived a noun *furkhtīn, which was the basis of one of the main words for ‘fear’ among the ancient Germanic languages (not superseded as the chief English term by fear until the 13th century). Its modern descendants include German furcht and English fright (in which the original sequence ‘vowel plus r’ was reversed by the process known as metathesis – something which also happened to Middle Low German vruchte, from which Swedish fruktan and Danish frygt ‘fear’ were borrowed).
fringe: fringe: [14] Late Latin fimbria meant ‘fibre, thread’ (it is used in modern English as an anatomical term for a threadlike structure, such as the filaments at the opening of the Fallopian tube). In the plural it was applied to a ‘fringe’, and eventually this meaning fed back into the singular. In Vulgar Latin fimbria, by the soundreversal process known as metathesis, became *frimbia, which passed into Old French as fringe or frenge – source of the English word.
Frisbee: Frisbee: [20] The name of this spinning plastic disc had its origin in a catching game played in Bridgeport, Connecticut in the 1950s. The participants were no doubt not the first to notice that an aerodynamically volatile flat disc produces more interesting and challenging results than a spherical object, but it was their particular choice of missiles that had farreaching terminological results: they used pie tins from the local Frisbie bakery. The idea for turning the dish into a marketable plastic product belonged to Fred Morrison, and he registered Frisbee (doubtless more commercially grabby than Frisbie) as a trademark in 1959.
fritter: fritter: see fry
frizz: frizz: see fry
fro: fro: see from
frock: frock: [14] Frock is a Germanic word, although English acquired it via Old French froc. It originally meant ‘long coat or tunic’ – a sense reflected in the related Old High German hroc ‘mantle, coat’, and preserved in English frock coat and unfrock ‘dismiss from the office of clergyman’ (frock once having denoted a ‘priest’s cassock’, and hence symbolized the priestly office). Its application to a ‘woman’s dress’ dates from the 16th century.
frog: frog: [OE] Frog comes from Old English frogga, which probably started life as a playful alternative to the more serious frosc or forsc. This derived from the pre-historic Germanic *fruskaz, which also produced German frosch and Dutch vorsch. Its use as a derogatory synonym for ‘French person’ goes back to the late 18th century, and was presumably inspired by the proverbial French appetite for the animals’ legs (although in fact frog as a general term of abuse can be traced back to the 14th century, and in the 17th century it was used for ‘Dutch person’).

It is not clear whether frog ‘horny wedge-shaped pad in a horse’s hoof’ [17] and frog ‘ornamental braiding’ [18] are the same word; the former may have been influenced by French fourchette and Italian forchetta, both literally ‘little fork’.
frolic: frolic: [16] Like its source, Dutch vrolijk, and the related German fröhlich, frolic was originally an adjective meaning ‘happy’. This usage had died out by the end of the 18th century, but in the meantime the adjective had been converted into a verb, and thence into a noun, both of which are still with us. (Dutch vrolijk was formed from the adjective vro ‘happy’, which probably goes back ultimately to a prehistoric Indo-European source which meant primarily ‘spring upwards, move swiftly’.)
from: from: [OE] From goes back ultimately to Indo- European *pr, which also produced English first, for, fore, foremost, former, and before. The addition of a suffix -m gave a word denoting ‘forward movement, advancement’ (as in Greek prómos ‘foremost’). By the time it reached Old English as from or fram the notion of ‘moving forward or onward’ had passed into ‘moving away’. The related fro [12], now little used except in to and fro, comes from Old Norse frá.
=> before, first, for, fore, former, forth, fro, primary
front: front: [13] As its close French relative front still does, front used to mean ‘forehead’. Both come from Latin frōns, a word of dubious origins whose primary meaning was ‘forehead’, but which already in the classical period was extending figuratively to the ‘most forwardly prominent part’ of anything. In present-day English, only distant memories remain of the original sense, in such contexts as ‘put up a brave front’ (a now virtually dead metaphor in which the forehead, and hence the countenance in general, once stood for the ‘demeanour’).

The related frontier [14], borrowed from Old French frontiere, originally meant ‘front part’; its modern sense is a secondary development.
=> frontier
frontispiece: frontispiece: [16] The final syllable of frontispiece has no etymological connection with piece. It comes from *spic-, a root denoting ‘see’ which is also represented in conspicuous and spectator. Here, as in the related auspices, its particular application is ‘divination by observation’. Added to Latin frōns ‘forehead’ it produced late Latin frontispicium, which originally meant ‘judgment of character through interpretation of facial features’.

Gradually it weakened semantically through ‘face’ to simply ‘front part’, and when English first acquired it, it was used for the ‘principal façade of a building’ (‘an indiscreet builder, who preferreth the care of his frontispiece before the maine foundation’, Richard Brathwait, English Gentleman 1630). By the 17th century, however, the word’s modern meaning ‘illustration facing the title page’ was becoming established. (Spellings based on an erroneous association with piece, incidentally, occur as early as the 16th century.)
=> auspices, conspicuous, front, inspect, spectator, spy
frost: frost: see freeze
frown: frown: [14] Probably the underlying notion of frowning is ‘snorting’ rather than ‘wrinkling the brows’. It comes from Old French froignier, which meant ‘snort’ as well as ‘frown’. It is assumed to have been adopted into French from a Celtic language of Gaul, and would therefore have been related to Welsh ffroen ‘nostril’.
fructify: fructify: see fruit
fructose: fructose: see fruit
frugal: frugal: [16] Paradoxically, frugal comes from a source that meant ‘fruitful’. English borrowed it from Latin frūgālis, which was derived from the adjective frūgī ‘useful’. This in turn was the dative case of the noun frūx ‘fruit, value’, which came from the same base as frūctus, the source of English fruit. The links in the semantic chain seem to have been that something that was ‘useful, valuable, or productive’ was also ‘profitable’, and that in order to be ‘profitable’ it must be ‘economical’ – hence frugal’s connotations of ‘careful expenditure’.
=> fruit
fruit: fruit: [12] English acquired fruit via Old French fruit from Latin frūctus, a source more clearly on display in fructify [14], fructose [19], etc. The underlying meaning of the Latin noun seems to have been ‘enjoyment of that which is produced’, for it came, like frūx (source of English frugal), from a base which also produced the verb fruī ‘enjoy’.

By classical times, however, it had passed from ‘enjoyment’ to the ‘product’ itself – the ‘rewards’ of an enterprise, the ‘return’ on an investment, or the ‘produce’ obtained from the soil or from farm animals. When it reached English this latter meaning had narrowed down somewhat, but it was still capable of being used far more broadly, for any ‘edible vegetable’, than we would do today, except in certain archaic expressions such as ‘fruits of the earth’.

The modern restriction to the edible reproductive body of a tree, bush, etc dates from the 13th century. English retains, of course, the more general sense ‘product, result’, although this is now usually expressed by the plural fruits.
=> fructify, frugal
frustrate: frustrate: [15] Frustrate comes from Latin frūstrātus ‘disappointed, frustrated’, the past participle of a verb formed from the adverb frūstrā ‘in error, in vain, uselessly’. This was a relative of Latin fraus, which originally meant ‘injury, harm’, hence ‘deceit’ and then ‘error’ (its English descendant, fraud [14], preserves ‘deceit’). Both go back to an original Indo- European *dhreu- which denoted ‘injure’.
=> fraud
fry: fry: Fry ‘cook in fat’ [13] and fry ‘young fish’ [14] are quite distinct words. The former comes via Old French frire from Latin frīgere, a cooking term which covered what we would now distinguish as ‘roasting’ and ‘frying’. It goes back ultimately to Indo-European *bhreu-, which also produced Latin fervēre ‘boil’ (source of English fervent).

Its past participle frictus formed the basis of Vulgar Latin *frīctūra, from which, via Old French, English gets fritter [14]; and the past participial stem of the French verb, fris-, may lie behind English frizz [17]. Fry ‘small fish’ may come from Anglo-Norman frie, a derivative of Old French freier ‘rub, spawn’, which in turn goes back to Latin frīgere ‘rub’.
=> fervent, fritter, frizz
palfrey: palfrey: [12] Etymologically, a palfrey is an ‘extra horse’. The word comes via Old French palefrei from medieval Latin palefrēdus, an alteration of an earlier paraverēdus (source of German pferd ‘horse’). This was a compound formed from Greek pará ‘extra’ (source of the English prefix para-) and late Latin verēdus ‘light fast horse used by couriers’, a word of Gaulish origin.
refrain: refrain: Refrain ‘chorus of a song’ [14] and refrain ‘desist’ [14] are different words. The former comes via Old French refrain from Provençal refranh. This was a derivative of the verb refranhar, which went back via Vulgar Latin *refrangere to Latin refringere ‘break off’ (source of English refract [17]). The etymological notion underlying the word is that the chorus of a song ‘breaks off’ and then resumes. Refrain ‘desist’ is descended from Latin refrēnāre ‘hold back’, a compound verb formed from the prefix re- ‘back’ and frēnum ‘bridle’. It reached English via Old French refrener.
=> fraction, refract