英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

bashful [bashful 词源字典]: bashful: see abash
[bashful etymology, bashful origin, 英语词源]
bifurcate: bifurcate: see fork
chock-full: chock-full: [14] There is more than one theory to account for this word. It occurs in a couple of isolated instances around 1400, as chokkefulle and chekeful, prompting speculation that the first element may be either chock ‘wooden block’, which came from an assumed Old Northern French *choque (thus ‘stuffed full with lumps of wood’) or cheek (thus ‘full up as far as the cheeks’). It resurfaces in the 17th century as choke-ful, which has given rise to the idea that it may originally have meant ‘so full as to choke’. The available evidence seems too scanty to come to a firm conclusion.
confute: confute: see beat
defunct: defunct: [16] The -funct in defunct is the same ultimately as that in function and perfunctory. It comes from the past participle of Latin fungī ‘perform, discharge’. In combination with the intensive prefix dē- this produced dēfunctus ‘discharged, finished’, hence ‘dead’, which was borrowed directly into English.
=> function, perfunctory
doleful: doleful: see indolent
fuck: fuck: [16] The most celebrated of the so-called ‘Anglo-Saxon’ four-letter words goes back in written form no further than the early 16th century – a far cry from the Old English period. A personal name John le Fucker, however, recorded from 1278, shows that it was around before 1500 (perhaps not committed to paper because even then it was under a taboo). There is little doubt that it is of Germanic origin, but its precise source has never been satisfactorily identified.

All the earliest known examples of the word come from Scotland, which may suggest a Scandinavian source, related to Norwegian dialect fukka ‘copulate’, and Swedish dialect focka ‘copulate, hit’ and fock ‘penis’.
fudge: fudge: [17] Fudge the verb, ‘evade’, probably comes from an earlier fadge, which meant ‘fake, deceive’, and hence ‘adjust, fit’, and this in turn probably goes back to a Middle English noun fage ‘deceit’ – but where fage came from is not clear. Fudge as the name of a type of toffee, which is first recorded in the late 19th century, may be a different use of the same word – perhaps originally ‘toffee “cooked up” or “bodged up” in an impromptu manner’.
fuel: fuel: [14] The notions of ‘fuel’ and ‘fire’ are closely connected etymologically. Fuel comes via Anglo-Norman fuaille from medieval Latin focālia, which was used in legal documents as a term for the ‘right to demand material for making a fire’. It was a derivative of Latin focus ‘fireplace, fire’, which also gave English focus, foyer, and fusillade.
=> focus, foyer, fusillade
fugitive: fugitive: see refuge
fugue: fugue: see refuge
full: full: [OE] Full and its verbal derivative fill go back ultimately to the Indo-European base *plē-, which also produced Latin plēnus ‘full’ (source of English plenary, plenty, and replenish, and of French plein and Italian pieno ‘full’) and English complete, deplete [19] (literally ‘unfill, empty’), implement, plebeian, plethora, plural, plus, replete [14], supply, and surplus [14].

The Indo- European derivative *plnós passed into prehistoric Germanic as *fulnaz, which eventually became *fullaz, source of German voll, Dutch vol, and Swedish and English full. Fulfil dates from the late Old English period; it originally meant literally ‘fill full, fill up’.
=> complete, deplete, fill, implement, plenty, plethora, plural, plus, replete, supply, surplus
fuller: fuller: see foil
fulminate: fulminate: [15] Etymologically, fulminate means ‘strike with lightning’. It comes from Latin fulmināre, a derivative of fulmen ‘lightning’. In medieval Latin its literal meaning gave way to the metaphorical ‘pronounce an ecclesiastical censure on’, and this provided the semantic basis for its English derivative fulminate, although in the 17th and 18th centuries there were sporadic learned reintroductions of its original meteorological sense: ‘Shall our Mountains be fulminated and thunder-struck’, William Sancroft, Lex ignea 1666.
fume: fume: [14] Fume comes via Old French fum from Latin fūmus ‘smoke, steam’. This in turn went back to a prehistoric Indo-European *dhūmo-, which also produced Sanskrit dhūmás ‘smoke’ and Russian and Polish dym ‘smoke’. The word’s verbal use, ‘be very angry’, comes, like seethe, from the notion of being ‘hot or steaming with fury’. Derived words in English include fumigate [16] and perfume.
=> fumigate, perfume
fun: fun: [17] A fun was originally a ‘trick, hoax, practical joke’: ‘A Hackney Coachman he did hug her, and was not this a very good Fun?’ Thomas D’Urfey, Pills to Purge Melancholy 1719. It came from the contemporary verb fun ‘cheat, hoax’, which was presumably a variant of the Middle English verb fon ‘make a fool of’. This in turn was a verbal use of the noun fon ‘fool’, probable origin of modern English fond.

The current sense of fun, ‘amusement, merriment’, did not develop until the 18th century. The derived adjective funny, in the sense ‘amusing’, was roughly contemporary with it; ‘strange, odd’ is an early 19th-century semantic development.
=> fond
funambulist: funambulist: see funicular
function: function: [16] The ultimate source of function is the Latin verb fungī ‘perform, discharge’, which may be related to Sanskrit bhunkte ‘he enjoys’. From its past participle, functus, was formed the abstract noun functiō ‘performance, activity’, which passed into English via Old French fonction. Other English derivatives of fungī include defunct and perfunctory [16], etymologically ‘done only to discharge an obligation’.
=> defunct, perfunctory
fund: fund: [17] Latin fundus meant ‘bottom’. English originally acquired it via French as fond, and in the course of the 17th century re-latinized it to fund. The literal meaning ‘bottom’ was retained until the mid 18th century (‘a Glass-Bubble fix’d to the Fund of a Vessel’, British Apollo 1709), but gradually it gave way to the metaphorical ‘basic supply, particularly of money’. From fundus was derived the Latin verb fundāre ‘lay the bottom for, establish’ (source of English found), and the next step on from this was the noun fundāmentum ‘bottom part, foundation’, which gave English fundament [13] and fundamental [15].
=> found, fundament
funeral: funeral: [14] Latin fūnus, a word of uncertain origin, meant ‘funeral’ and, probably secondarily, ‘corpse’. From it was derived the adjective fūnerālis, which English acquired via Old French in the 14th century. The noun funeral followed in the 16th century; it came from the same ultimate source, of course, but by a slightly different route – from medieval Latin fūnerālia via Old French funeraille.
fungus: fungus: [16] Fungus was introduced into English in the early 16th century as a learned and more all-embracing alternative to mushroom. It was borrowed from Latin fungus, which probably came from Greek sphóngos ‘sponge’, source of English sponge.
=> sponge
funicular: funicular: [19] A funicular railway is literally one that runs on a ‘rope’. The word was coined from Latin fūniculus, a diminutive form of fūnis ‘rope’ (a word of uncertain origin from which comes Italian fune ‘cable, rope’). Fūnus also gave English funambulist ‘tightrope walker’ [18].
=> funambulist
funnel: funnel: [15] Etymologically, a funnel is something used for ‘pouring in’. The word comes via Provençal fonilh from Latin infundibulum ‘funnel’. This was a derivative of infundere ‘pour in’, a compound verb formed from in- ‘in’ and fundere ‘pour’ (source of English found ‘melt’, foundry, and fuse).
=> found, foundry, fuse
fur: fur: [14] Old English did not have a distinct word for ‘animal’s hair’ – the nearest approach to it was fell ‘animal’s hide’. Then in the 13th century English acquired the verb fur ‘line with fur’ from Anglo-Norman *furrer or Old French forrer ‘encase, line’. These were derivatives of the Old French noun forre ‘sheath, case’, a loanword from prehistoric Germanic *fōthram ‘sheath’, which in turn goes back to the Indo-European base *pō- ‘protect’.

In the 14th century the new English verb was taken as the basis for a noun, which originally meant ‘trimming for a garment, made from fur’, or more loosely ‘garment made from fur’; it was not until the 15th century that it was used for ‘animal’s hair’.
furl: furl: see firm
furlong: furlong: [OE] Furlong ‘eighth of a mile’, which has now virtually died out except in horse-racing terminology, is part of a vocabulary of lengthmeasuring bequeathed to us by the agricultural practices of our ancestors. It originated as an Old English compound formed from furh ‘furrow’ and lang ‘long’ – that is, the length of a furrow ploughed across a standard-sized square field of ten acres.

Since the term acre varied somewhat in its application at different times and places, the length of a furlong could not be computed with great precision from it, but in practice from about the 9th century the furlong was pegged to the stadium, a measure equal to one eighth of a Roman mile.
=> furrow, long
furnace: furnace: [13] Etymologically, furnace means roughly ‘warm place’. It comes via Old French fornais from Latin fornāx ‘furnace’. This was a derivative of fornus ‘oven’, a word related to formus ‘warm’, which goes back to the same Indo-European source, *ghworm-, *ghwerm-, as probably produced English warm.
=> fornication
furnish: furnish: [15] Far apart as they may now seem, furnish is closely parallel in its development with frame. Both originated as verbs based on from, in its earliest signification ‘forward movement, advancement, progress’. Frame was a purely English formation, but furnish goes back beyond that to prehistoric Germanic, where it was formed as *frumjan. This was borrowed into Vulgar Latin as *fromīre, which in due course diversified to *formīre and *fornīre, the form adopted into Old French as furnir.

Its lengthened stem furniss- provided English with furnish. To begin with this retained the ancestral sense ‘advance to completion, accomplish, fulfil’ (‘Behight [promise] no thing but that ye may furnish and hold it’, Melusine 1500). However, this died out in the mid 16th century, leaving the field clear for the semantic extension ‘provide’. The derivative furniture [16] comes from French fourniture, but its main meaning, ‘chairs, tables, etc’, recorded from as early as the 1570s, is a purely English development (the majority of European languages get their word for ‘furniture’ from Latin mōbīle ‘movable’: French meubles, Italian mobili, Spanish muebles, German möbel, Swedish möbler, Dutch meubelen, Russian mebel’ – indeed, even Middle English had mobles, though it retained the broader meaning ‘movable property’).

By another route, Old French furnir has also given English veneer.
=> from, furniture, veneer
furrow: furrow: [OE] Furrow is an ancient agricultural term, going back to the prehistoric Indo- European base *prk-, which also produced Welsh rhych ‘furrow’, Armenian herk ‘newly ploughed land’, Latin porca ‘ridge between furrows’, and possibly also Sanskrit parçãna- ‘chasm’ and Latin porcus ‘grave’. Its Germanic descendant was *furkh-, which produced German furche, Dutch voor, Swedish fåra, and English furrow.
=> furlong
further: further: [OE] Etymologically, further is simply a comparative form of forth, and originally meant nothing more than simply ‘more forward’. Its more metaphorical senses, ‘in addition’ and ‘to a greater extent’, are secondary developments. It was formed in the pre-historic Germanic period, and so has relatives in other Germanic languages, such as German vorder. Its verbal use is apparently equally ancient.
=> forth
furtive: furtive: [15] Etymologically, someone who is furtive ‘carries things away like a thief’. The word comes via Old French furtif from Latin furtīvus ‘stealthy, hidden’, a derivative of furtum ‘theft’, which in turn was based on fūr ‘thief’. This was either borrowed from or related to Greek phór ‘thief’, which came ultimately from Indo-European *bher- ‘carry’ (source of English bear) and thus meant literally ‘someone who carries things off’. A ferret is etymologically a ‘furtive’ animal.
=> bear, ferret
furze: furze: see gorse
fuse: fuse: English has two distinct words fuse. The noun, ‘igniting device’ [17], comes via Italian fuso from Latin fūsus ‘spindle’, a word of unknown origin. Its modern application comes from the fact that the long thin shape of the original gunpowder-filled tubes used for setting off bombs reminded people of spindles. The Vulgar Latin diminutive form of fūsus, *fūsellus, gave French fuseau ‘spindle’, which is the ultimate source of English fuselage [20] (etymologically, ‘something shaped like a spindle’).

The verb fuse ‘melt’ [17] probably comes from fūsus, the past participle of Latin fundere ‘pour, melt’ (source of English found, foundry, and fusion [16]).
=> fuselage; found, foundry, fusion
fuss: fuss: [18] The early use of fuss by Irish-born writers such as Jonathan Swift and George Farquhar has led to the supposition that it is of Anglo-Irish origin, but no substantiation for this has ever been found on the other side of the Irish Sea. Among suggestions as to how it came into being have been that it was an alteration of force, as in the now obsolete phrase make no force of ‘not bother about’, and that it was simply onomatopoeic, imitating the sound of someone puffing and blowing and making a fuss.
fusty: fusty: see beat
futile: futile: see found
future: future: [14] Future comes via Old French future from Latin futūrus ‘going to be, about to be’, which was used as the future participle of esse ‘be’. It was a descendant of the Indo-European base *bheu- or *bhu-, which originally denoted ‘grow’, and also produced English be, the German present first and second person singular forms bin and bist, and the Latin perfect tense of esse (fuī ‘I was’, etc).
=> be
grateful: grateful: [16] Grateful is a curious sort of adjective. The grate that a grateful person is full of is a now obsolete adjective, meaning ‘pleasing’ and ‘thankful’, which was derived from Latin grātus. It is unusual for adjectives ending in -ful themselves to be formed from adjectives, rather than from nouns, and it has been suggested in this case that the related Italian gradevole ‘pleasing’ may have had some influence.

Latin grātus itself meant ‘pleasing’ as well as ‘thankful’, and has also given English congratulate [16], gratify [16], gratitude [16], and gratuity [16], and, via the derived noun grātia, grace and gratis [15].
=> congratulate, grace, gratis, gratitude
obfuscate: obfuscate: see dusk
perfume: perfume: [16] The -fume of perfume is the same word as English fumes, but whereas fumes has gone downhill semantically, perfume has remained in the realms of pleasant odours. It comes from French parfum, a derivative of the verb parfumer. This was borrowed from early Italian parfumare, a compound formed from the prefix par- ‘through’ and fumare ‘smoke’, which denoted a ‘pervading by smoke’. When it first arrived in English, the semantic element ‘burning’ was still present, and perfume denoted the ‘fumes produced by burning a substance, such as incense’, but this gradually dropped out in favour of the more general ‘pleasant smell’.
=> fume
perfunctory: perfunctory: see function
refuge: refuge: [14] A refuge is etymologically a place one ‘flees’ to in order to get away from danger. The word comes via Old French refuge from Latin refugium, a derivative of refugere. This was a compound verb formed from the prefix re- ‘away’ and fugere ‘flee’ (source of English fugitive [14] and fugue [16]). The derivative refugee [17] is an adaptation of refugié, the past participle of modern French refugier ‘take refuge’.
=> fugitive, refugee
refulgent: refulgent: see flame
refuse: refuse: [14] Refuse comes via Old French refuser from an unrecorded Vulgar Latin *refūsāre. It is not altogether clear where this came from, for it has no direct Latin antecedent. One theory is that it represents a blend of Latin recūsāre ‘refuse’ (source of English recusant [16]), a compound verb based on causa ‘cause’, and refūtāre ‘rebut’ (source of English refute [16]), a compound verb based on the element *fūt-, found also in English confute [16].

But another long-established school of thought derives it from refūsus, the past participle of Latin refundere ‘pour back’ (source of English refund [14]) – the underlying notion being of something ‘poured back’ or ‘rejected’. The noun refuse ‘rubbish’ [15] probably comes from Old French refus ‘refusal’, a derivative of refuser ‘refuse’.
refute: refute: see beat
scrofula: scrofula: see screw
artful (adj.): 1610s, "learned, well-versed in the (liberal) arts," also "characterized by technical skill," from art (n.) + -ful. Meaning "skilled in adapting means to ends" is from 1739. Related: Artfully; artfulness.
awful (adj.): c. 1300, agheful "worthy of respect or fear," from aghe, an earlier form of awe (n.), + -ful. The Old English word was egefull. Weakened sense "very bad" is from 1809; weakened sense of "exceedingly" is by 1818.
awfully (adv.): c. 1300, "so as to inspire reverence," from awful + -ly (2). Meaning "dreadfully, so as to strike one with awe" is recorded from late 14c. As a simple intensifier, "very, exceedingly," is attested from c. 1830.
bagful (n.): c. 1300, bagge-ful, from bag (n.) + -ful.