英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

abash [abash 词源字典]: abash: [14] Abash shares a common ancestry with abeyance [16], although the latter underwent an about-turn in meaning in the 17th century which disguises their relationship. They go back to a Latin verb batāre, meaning ‘yawn’ or ‘gape’. This was borrowed into French as baer, later bayer (it was the source of English bay ‘recessed space’).

The addition of the prefix es- (from Latin ex-) produced esbaer, later e(s)bahir ‘gape with astonishment’, whence, via the present stem e(s)bass-, came English abash, which originally meant ‘stand amazed’ as well as ‘embarrass, discomfit’. (Bashful is a 16thcentury derivative, with elision of the a-, which was first used by the dramatist Nicholas Udall.) Addition of the prefix a- to Old French baer, meanwhile, had given abaer ‘aspire after’, and its noun abeance ‘aspiration, desire’.

In legal terminology, this word was used in French for the condition of a person in expectation or hope of receiving property, but in English the focus quickly became reversed to the property, and its condition of being temporarily without an owner.
=> abeyance, bashful[abash etymology, abash origin, 英语词源]
act: act: [14] Act, action, active, actor all go back to Latin agere ‘do, perform’ (which is the source of a host of other English derivatives, from agent to prodigal). The past participle of this verb was āctus, from which we get act, partly through French acte, but in the main directly from Latin. The Latin agent noun, āctor, came into the language at about the same time, although at first it remained a rather uncommon word in English, with technical legal uses; it was not until the end of the 16th century that it came into its own in the theatre (player had hitherto been the usual term).

Other Latin derivatives of the past participial stem āct- were the noun āctiō, which entered English via Old French action, and the adjective āctīvus, which gave English active. See also ACTUAL.
=> action, active, agent, cogent, examine, prodigal
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
angle: angle: There have been two distinct words angle in English. The older is now encountered virtually only in its derivatives, angler and angling, but until the early 19th century an angle was a ‘fishing hook’ (or, by extension, ‘fishing tackle’). It entered the language in the Old English period, and was based on Germanic *angg- (source also of German angel ‘fishing tackle’).

An earlier form of the word appears to have been applied by its former inhabitants to a fishhook-shaped area of Schleswig, in the Jutland peninsula; now Angeln, they called it Angul, and so they themselves came to be referred to as Angles. They brought their words with them to England, of course, and so both the country and the language, English, now contain a reminiscence of their fishhooks. Angle in the sense of a ‘figure formed by two intersecting lines’ entered the language in the 14th century (Chaucer is its first recorded user).

It came from Latin angulus ‘corner’, either directly or via French angle. The Latin word was originally a diminutive of *angus, which is related to other words that contain the notion of ‘bending’, such as Greek ágkūra (ultimate source of English anchor) and English ankle. They all go back to Indo-European *angg- ‘bent’, and it has been speculated that the fishhook angle, with its temptingly bent shape, may derive from the same source.
=> english; anchor, ankle
annual: annual: [14] Annual comes, via Old French annuel, from annuālis, a late Latin adjective based on annus ‘year’ (perhaps as a blend of two earlier, classical Latin adjectives, annuus and annālis – ultimate source of English annals [16]). Annus itself may go back to an earlier, unrecorded *atnos, probably borrowed from an ancient Indo-European language of the Italian peninsula, such as Oscan or Umbrian.

It appears to be related to Gothic athnam ‘years’ and Sanskrit átati ‘go, wander’. The medieval Latin noun annuitās, formed from the adjective annuus, produced French annuité, which was borrowed into English as annuity in the 15th century.
=> annals, anniversary, annuity
approach: approach: [14] Approach is etymologically connected with propinquity ‘nearness’; they both go back ultimately to Latin prope ‘near’. Propinquity [14] comes from a derived Latin adjective propinquus ‘neighbouring’, while approach is based on the comparative form propius ‘nearer’. From this was formed the late Latin verb appropiāre ‘go nearer to’, which came to English via Old French aprochier.

Latin prope, incidentally, may be connected in some way with the preposition prō (a relative of English for), and a hypothetical variant of it, *proqe, may be the source, via its superlative proximus, of English proximity and approximate.
=> approximate, propinquity, proximity
arm: arm: [OE] The two distinct senses of arm, ‘limb’ and ‘weapon’, both go back ultimately to the same source, the Indo-European base *ar- ‘fit, join’ (which also produced art and article). One derivative of this was Latin arma ‘weapons, tools’, which entered English via Old French armes in the 13th century (the singular form was virtually unknown before the 19th century, but the verb arm, from Latin armāre via Old French armer, came into the language in the 13th century).

The other strand is represented in several European languages, meaning variously ‘joint’, ‘shoulder’, and ‘arm’: Latin armus ‘shoulder’, for example, and Greek harmos ‘joint’. The prehistoric Germanic form was *armaz, from which developed, among others, German, Dutch, Swedish, and English arm.
=> art, article
badminton: badminton: [19] The game of ‘battledore and shuttlecock’ has been around for some time (it appears to go back to the 16th century; the word battledore, which may come ultimately from Portuguese batedor ‘beater’, first turns up in the 15th century, meaning ‘implement for beating clothes when washing them’, but by the 16th century is being used for a ‘small racket’; while shuttlecock, so named because it is hit back and forth, first appears in the early 16th century, in a poem of John Skelton’s).

This was usually a fairly informal, improvised affair, however, and latterly played mainly by children; the modern, codified game of badminton did not begin until the 1860s or 1870s, and takes its name from the place where it was apparently first played, Badminton House, Avon, country seat of the dukes of Beaufort. (A slightly earlier application of the word badminton had been to a cooling summer drink, a species of claret cup.)
bail: bail: There are now three distinct words bail in English, although they may all be related. Bail ‘money deposited as a guarantee when released’ [14] comes from Old French bail, a derivative of the verb baillier ‘take charge of, carry’, whose source was Latin bājulāre ‘carry’, from bājulus ‘carrier’. Bail ‘remove water’ [13], also spelled bale, probably comes ultimately from the same source; its immediate antecedent was Old French baille ‘bucket’, which perhaps went back to a hypothetical Vulgar Latin *bājula, a feminine form of bājulus.

The bail on top of cricket stumps [18] has been connected with Latin bājulus too – this could have been the source of Old French bail ‘cross-beam’ (‘loadcarrying beam’), which could quite plausibly have been applied to cricket bails; on the other hand it may go back to Old French bail, baille ‘enclosed court’ (source of English bailey [13]), which originally in English meant the ‘encircling walls of a castle’ but by the 19th century at the latest had developed the sense ‘bar for separating animals in a stable’.
=> bailey
bandy: bandy: [16] To ‘bandy words with someone’ may go back to an original idea of ‘banding together to oppose others’. The word comes from French bander ‘oppose’, which is possibly a derivative of bande ‘group, company’ (source of English band). The rather complex semantic development goes from ‘taking sides’, through ‘opposing a third party’, ‘exchanging blows’, ‘exchanging hits’ (in the 16th and 17th centuries it was a term in tennis), to ‘exchanging hostile words’.

The adjective bandy [17], as in ‘bandy legs’, probably comes from the noun bandy ‘curved stick used in an early form of hockey’ (the game was also known as bandy). It may ultimately be related to the verb bandy, the connection being the notion of knocking a ball to and fro.
=> band
be: be: [OE] There are four distinct components that go to make up the modern English verb be. The infinitive form be comes ultimately from an Indo-European base *bheu-, *bhu-, which also produced, by other routes, future and physical. Its Germanic descendant was *bu-, which signified on the one hand ‘dwell’ (from which we get booth, bower, byre, build, burly, byelaw, and the final element of neighbour), and on the other hand ‘grow, become’, which led to its adoption as part of the verb expressing ‘being’ (in Old English particularly with the future sense of ‘coming to be’). Am and is go back to the ancient Indo- European verb ‘be’, *es- or *s-, which has contributed massively to ‘be’ verbs throughout all Indo-European languages (third person present singulars Greek esti, Latin est, French est, German ist, Sanskrit ásti, Welsh ys, for example) The Indo-European first and third person singular forms were, respectively, ésmi and ésti.

For the present plural Old English used the related sind(on) (as found in Latin sunt, French sont, and German sind), but this died out in the 12th century, to be replaced by are, which comes from a Germanic base *ar- of unknown origin. From the same source is the now archaic second person singular art. The past tense forms was, were come ultimately from an Indo-European base *weswhich meant ‘dwell, remain’.

Related words in other Indo-European languages include Sanskrit vásati ‘dwell, remain’ and Gothic wisan ‘remain, continue’.
=> booth, bower, build, burly, byelaw, byre
bear: bear: [OE] The two English words bear ‘carry’ and bear the animal come from completely different sources. The verb, Old English beran, goes back via Germanic *ber- to Indo-European *bher-, which already contained the two central meaning elements that have remained with its offspring ever since, ‘carry’ and ‘give birth’. It is the source of a very large number of words in the Indo-European languages, including both Germanic (German gebären ‘give birth’, Swedish börd ‘birth’) and non-Germanic (Latin ferre and Greek phérein ‘bear’, source of English fertile and amphora [17], and Russian brat ‘seize’).

And a very large number of other English words are related to it: on the ‘carrying’ side, barrow, berth, bier, burden, and possibly brim; and on the ‘giving birth’ side, birth itself and bairn ‘child’ [16]. Borne and born come from boren, the Old English past participle of bear; the distinction in usage between the two (borne for ‘carried’, born for ‘given birth’) arose in the early 17th century.

Etymologically, the bear is a ‘brown animal’. Old English bera came from West Germanic *bero (whence also German bär and Dutch beer), which may in turn go back to Indo- European *bheros, related to English brown. The poetic name for the bear, bruin [17], follows the same semantic pattern (it comes from Dutch bruin ‘brown’), and beaver means etymologically ‘brown animal’ too.
=> amphora, bairn, barrow, berth, bier, born, burden, fertile, fortune, paraphernalia, suffer; brown
bend: bend: [OE] English band, bind, bond, and bundle are closely allied: all go back to a prehistoric Germanic base *band-. The relationship in meaning was, in the case of bend, more obvious in Old English times, when bendan meant ‘tie up’ as well as ‘curve’ (a sense preserved in the modern English noun bend ‘knot’, as in carrick bend).

The rather strange-seeming meaning development appears to have come about as follows: bend in the sense ‘tie, constrain’ was used for the pulling of bow-strings, with reference to the strain or tension thereby applied to the bow; the natural consequence of this was of course that the bow curved, and hence (although not until the late 13th century) bend came to be used for ‘curve’.
=> band, bind, bond, bundle
best: best: [OE] Best and better, the anomalous superlative and comparative of good, go back to a prehistoric Germanic base *bat-, which is related to the archaic English boot ‘remedy’ (as in to boot) and meant generally ‘advantage, improvement’. Its comparative and superlative were *batizon and *batistaz, which came into Old English as respectively betera and betest (gradually reduced via betst to best). The term best man originated in Scotland; it has gradually replaced the earlier bride(s)man and groomsman.
=> better, boot
black: black: [OE] The usual Old English word for ‘black’ was sweart (source of modern English swart and swarthy, and related to German schwarz ‘black’), but black already existed (Old English blæc), and since the Middle English period it has replaced swart. Related but now extinct forms existed in other Germanic languages (including Old Norse blakkr ‘dark’ and Old Saxon blac ‘ink’), but the word’s ultimate source is not clear. Some have compared it with Latin flagrāre and Greek phlégein, both meaning ‘burn’, which go back to an Indo-European base *phleg-, a variant of *bhleg-.
bless: bless: [OE] Bless occurs in no other language than English, and originally meant ‘mark with blood’, from some sort of religious rite in which such marking conferred sanctity. It probably goes back to a prehistoric Germanic formation *blōthisōjan, a derivative of *blōtham ‘blood’, which was taken up by no Germanic language other than Old English. Here it produced blētsian, which by the 13th century had become blesse. The word’s connotations of ‘happiness’ and ‘well-being’, which go back at least to the year 1000, were probably influenced by the etymologically unrelated bliss.
=> blood
brigade: brigade: [17] Brigade is one of a small set of words (others are brigand and brigantine) which go back to Italian briga ‘strife’. It is not clear where this came from; theories have centred either on a Celtic origin, comparing Old Irish brig ‘strength’, or on a derivation from the Indo- European base *bhreg-, which produced English break.

Either way, the noun briga produced the verb brigare ‘contend, brawl’, from which in turn came the noun brigata. This originally meant simply ‘crowd or gang of people’, but soon developed the special sense ‘military company’. English acquired the word via French brigade. Meanwhile, the present participle of the Italian verb had given brigante, which English borrowed via Old French as brigand [14], and the diminutive brigantino ‘fighting ship’, source of English brigantine [16] (abbreviated in the 18th century to brig). Brigadier is a 17th-century adoption, from French.
=> brig, brigand, brigantine
buck: buck: [OE] Old English had two related words which have coalesced into modern English buck: bucca ‘male goat’ and buc ‘male deer’. Both go back to a prehistoric Germanic stem *buk-, and beyond that probably to an Indo-European source. The 18th-century meaning ‘dashing fellow’ probably comes ultimately from the related Old Norse bokki, a friendly term for a male colleague, which was originally adopted in English in the 14th century meaning simply ‘fellow’. The colloquial American sense ‘dollar’ comes from an abbreviation of buckskin, which was used as a unit of trade with the Native Americans in Frontier days.
=> butcher
bulge: bulge: [13] Etymologically, bulge and budget are the same word, and indeed when English first acquired bulge it was as a noun, with, like budget, the sense ‘pouch’. It came from Old French bouge ‘leather bag’, a descendant of Latin bulga, which may have been of Gaulish origin (medieval Irish bolg ‘bag’ has been compared). The word’s present-day connotations of ‘swelling’ and ‘protruding’ presumably go back to an early association of ‘pouches’ with ‘swelling up when filled’ (compare the case of bellows and belly, which originally meant ‘bag’, and came from a source which meant ‘swell’), but curiously, apart from an isolated instance around 1400 when bulge is used for a ‘hump on someone’s back’, there is no evidence for this meaning in English before the 17th century.

Additionally, from the 17th to the 19th centuries bulge was used for the ‘bottom of a ship’s hull’; it has now been superseded in this sense by bilge [15], which may well be a variant form.
=> bilge, budget
campaign: campaign: [17] Ultimately, campaign and champagne are the same word. Both go back to late Latin campānia, a derivative of Latin campus ‘open field’ (source of English camp). This passed into Old French as champagne and into Italian as campagna ‘open country’, and both words have subsequently come to be used as the designation of regions in France and Italy (whence English champagne [17], wine made in the Champagne area of eastern France).

The French word was also borrowed into English much earlier, as the now archaic champaign ‘open country’ [14]. Meanwhile, in Italian a particular military application of campagna had arisen: armies disliked fighting in winter because of the bad weather, so they stayed in camp, not emerging to do battle in the open countryside (the campagna) until summer. Hence campagna came to mean ‘military operations’; it was borrowed in to French as campagne, and thence into English.
=> camp, champagne
carry: carry: [14] For such a basic and common word, carry has a surprisingly brief history. It does not go back to some prehistoric Indo-European root, but was formed less than 1000 years ago in Anglo-Norman or Old Northern French, on the basis of carre or car (immediate source of English car). The verb carier thus meant literally ‘transport in a wheeled vehicle’. This sense was carried over into English, and though it has since largely given way to the more general ‘convey’, it is preserved in the derivative carriage, in such expressions as ‘carriage paid’.
=> car, carriage
cheek: cheek: [OE] Old English cēace and cēoce go back respectively to prehistoric West Germanic *kǣkōn and *keukōn, but beyond that the word has no known relatives in other Indo-European languages. It has, however, produced one or two interesting offshoots. It forms the basis of the verb choke, and may be the source of chock-full (literally, ‘full up to the cheeks’); and Middle Dutch kākelen, source of English cackle [13], may be partly based on the related Middle Dutch kāke ‘jaw’. The metaphorical sense ‘impudence’ (whence cheeky) arose in the 19th century, originally as ‘insolent talk’.
=> cackle, chock-full, choke
chin: chin: [OE] Chin has relatives throughout the Germanic languages (German has kinn, for instance, and Dutch kin) and is also represented in words for ‘lower jaw’, ‘mouth’, ‘cheek’, etc in other Indo-European languages (Greek gnáthos ‘jaw’, for example, which gave English prognathous ‘having projecting jaws’). All go back to a prehistoric Indo-European source *genw-.
=> prognathous
clean: clean: [OE] Etymologically, clean and German klein ‘small’ are the same word. Both go back to West Germanic *klainoz, which meant ‘clear, pure’, but whereas the English adjective has stayed fairly close to the original meaning, the German one has passed via ‘clean’, ‘neat’, ‘dainty’, and ‘delicate’ to ‘small’. It has been speculated that *klainiz was based on *klai-, which connoted ‘stickiness’ (it was the source of English clay and clammy).

The reasoning is that something sticky, perhaps from a coating of oil, would have been perceived as having a clear or shiny surface, and there may also have been a suggestion of the purity conferred by a ceremonial anointing with oil. The derivatives cleanse and cleanly (whence cleanliness) are both Old English formations.
=> clammy, clay, cleanse
clerk: clerk: [11] Clerk and its relatives cleric and clergy owe their existence ultimately to a Biblical reference, in Deuteronomy xviii 2, to the Levites, members of an Israelite tribe whose men were assistants to the Temple priests: ‘Therefore shall they have no inheritance among their brethren: the Lord is their inheritance’. Greek for ‘inheritance’ is klēros, and so it came about that matters relating to the Christian ministry were denoted in late Greek by the derived adjective klērikós.

This passed into ecclesiastical Latin as clēricus, which was originally borrowed into late Old English as cleric or clerc, later reinforced by Old French clerc to give modern English clerk. Its presentday bureaucratic connotations, which emerged in the 16th century, go back to an earlier time when members of the clergy were virtually the only people who could read or write.

However, religious associations have of course been preserved in cleric [17], from ecclesiastical Latin clēricus, and clergy [13], a blend of Old French clergie (a derivative of clerc) and clerge (from the ecclestiastical Latin derivative clēricātus). The compound clergyman is 16th century.
=> cleric, clergy
condolence: condolence: [17] Condolence and sympathy are parallel formations: both go back to classical originals (late Latin condolēre and Greek sumpátheia respectively) which meant literally ‘together-suffering’. Latin condolēre was a compound verb formed from the prefix com- ‘together’ and dolēre ‘suffer pain’ (source of English dolour and doleful). This entered English in the 16th century as the now seldom encountered verb condole, but the comparative frequency of the noun condolence is probably due to the early 17th-century adoption of French condoléance (the spelling condoleance was common in English in the 17th and 18th centuries).
=> doleful, dolour
cord: cord: [13] Cord ‘string’ and chord ‘straight line’ were originally the same word. They go back to Greek khordé ‘string’, which came into English via Latin chorda and Old French corde. In English it was originally written cord, a spelling which included the sense ‘string of a musical instrument’. But in the 16th century the spelling of this latter sense was remodelled to chord, on the basis of Latin chorda, and it has been retained for its semantic descendants ‘straight line joining two points on a curve’ and ‘straight line joining the front and rear edges of a wing’. (Chord ‘combination of musical notes’ [15] is no relation: it is a reduced version of accord, which comes via Old French acorder from Vulgar Latin *accordāre, a compound verb based on Latin cors ‘heart’, and ironically was originally spelled cord.) Related words include cordon [16], from the French diminutive form cordon, and cordite [19], so named from its often being shaped into cords resembling brown twine.
=> chord, cordite, cordon, yarn
cup: cup: [OE] Cup is a member of a large Indo- European family of words denoting broadly ‘round container’ that go back ultimately to the bases *kaup- (source of English head) and *keup-. This produced Greek kúpellon ‘drinking vessel’, English hive, and Latin cūpa ‘barrel’, source of English coop [13] (via Middle Dutch kūpe) and cooper ‘barrel-maker’ [14] (from a derivative of Middle Dutch kūpe). A postclassical by-form of cūpa was cuppa, from which came German kopf ‘head’ and English cup.
=> coop, cupola
cycle: cycle: [14] Cycle is one of a wide range of English words (including pole, colony, and cult) which go back ultimately to the Indo-European base *qwel-, *qwol-, which signified ‘move around’. Its reduplicated form, *qweqwlo-, produced English wheel, Sanskrit cakrá- ‘wheel, circle’ (ultimate source of the polo term chukker [19]), and Greek kúklos ‘circle’.

English acquired this via French cycle or late Latin cyclus. Its use as a cover term for bicycles, tricycles, etc (of which words in this context it is an abbreviation) dates from the late 19th century. Related forms in English include cyclone ‘mass of rapidly circulating wind’ [19] (probably a modification of Greek kúklōma), cyclamen [16] (so named from its bulbous roots), and encyclopedia. _ BICYCLE, CHUKKER, COLONY, CULT, ENCYCLOPEDIA, POLE, WHEEL.
dear: dear: [OE] Dear is one of the English language’s more semantically stable words. By the 11th century it had already developed its two major present-day senses, ‘much-loved’ and ‘expensive’, which are shared by its Germanic relative, German teuer (Dutch has differentiated dier ‘much loved’ from duur ‘expensive’). All these words go back to a prehistoric West and North Germanic *deurjaz, whose ultimate origin is not known.

In the 13th century an abstract noun, dearth, was derived from the adjective. It seems likely that this originally meant ‘expensiveness’ (although instances of this sense, which has since disappeared, are not recorded before the late 15th century). This developed to ‘period when food is expensive, because scarce’, and eventually to ‘scarcity’ generally.
=> dearth
despot: despot: [16] The ultimate source of despot is Greek despótēs ‘lord’. It is related to Sanskrit dampati ‘master of the house’, and both probably go back to an Indo-European compound formed from *domo- ‘house’ (source of Latin domus ‘house’, and hence of English domestic) and another element related to Latin potis ‘able’ and English power. (Latin dominus ‘lord’, a derivative of domus ‘house’ and originally meaning ‘master of the house’, is a semantically parallel formation.) Greek despótēs was used for ‘lord, master’ or ‘ruler’ in various contexts, with no particular pejorative connotation (in modern Greek it means ‘bishop’).

But most rulers in ancient times enjoyed absolute power, and so eventually the word (which entered English via medieval Latin despota and early modern French despot) came to mean ‘tyrannical ruler’; this sense became firmly established at the time of the French Revolution.
=> domestic, dominion
dimple: dimple: [13] Dimple originally meant ‘pothole’, and was not applied to an ‘indentation in the flesh’ until the 14th century. There is no surviving record of the word in Old English, but it probably existed, as *dympel; Old High German had the cognate tumphilo, ancestor of modern German tümpel ‘pool, puddle’. Both go back to a Germanic *dump-, which may be a nasalized version of *d(e)up-, source of English deep and dip.
=> deep, dip
dingy: dingy: [18] Nobody is quite sure where dingy comes from, but the very occasional occurrence of ding or dinge as Middle English forms of dung suggests that it may originally have signified ‘dung-coloured’ (although if it came from such a source it might have been expected to rhyme with springy rather than stingy). Dung [OE] itself appears to go back ultimately to an Indo-European base *dhengh- denoting ‘covering’ (relatives include the Lithuanian verb dengti ‘cover’), so its etymological significance is ‘material spread over the earth (for fertilization)’ rather than ‘excrement’.
=> dung
dock: dock: English has no fewer than four distinct words dock. The oldest is the plant-name, which comes from Old English docce. Dock for ships [14] was borrowed from Middle Low German or Middle Dutch docke, which may have come from Vulgar Latin *ductia ‘duct, conduit’, a hypothetical derivative of Latin dūcere ‘lead’ (source of English, duke, educate, etc). Dock ‘cut off’ [14] was originally a verbal application of the noun dock ‘horse’s short tail’, which appears to go back to a Germanic *dukk- ‘bundle’; it may be the source of docket [15]. Dock for prisoners [16] was originally thieves’ slang, borrowed from Flemish dok ‘cage’.
=> duke, educate, induce; docket
doctor: doctor: [14] Doctor, doctrine, and document all go back ultimately to the Latin verb docēre ‘teach’. This in turn was a descendant of an Indo-European base *dok-, *dek- which also produced Greek dokein ‘seem, think’ (source of English dogma [17], orthodox, and paradox) and didáskein ‘learn’ (source of English didactic [17]) and Latin decere ‘be fitting or suitable’ (source of English decent, decorate, and dignity) and dexter (source of English dextrous).

Latin doctor was derived from doctus, the past participle of docēre, and came into English via Old French doctour. It originally meant ‘teacher’, and the main modern sense of ‘medical practitioner’, although sporadically recorded in Middle English, did not become firmly established until the late 16th century. Latin doctrīna ‘teaching, learning’, a derivative of Latin doctor, produced English doctrine [14].

Latin documentum, which came directly from docēre, originally meant ‘lesson’, but in medieval Latin its signification had passed through ‘written instruction’ to ‘official paper’. English acquired it as document [15]. The derivative documentary is 19th-century.
=> dainty, decent, decorate, dextrous, didactic, dignity, doctrine, document, dogma, orthodox, paradox
door: door: [OE] Old English had two closely related words for ‘door’: duru (mirrored by German tür ‘door’) and dor (which corresponds to German tor ‘gate’). They gradually came together during the Middle English period. Both go back ultimately to the Indo-European base *dhwer-, which also produced Greek thúrū ‘door’ (source of English thyroid), Latin foris ‘door’ (source of English foreign and forest) and forum, Sanskrit dvar- ‘door’, Russian dver’ ‘door’, Lithuanian dùrys ‘gate’, etc.
=> foreign, forest, thyroid
drag: drag: [14] Drag has two possible sources, each with equally plausible claims: Old English dragan, source of modern English draw, or the related Old Norse draga. Both go back to a common Germanic source. Of the modern colloquial applications of the word, ‘women’s clothes worn by men’ seems to have originated in 19th-century theatrical slang, in reference to the ‘dragging’ of a woman’s long skirts along the ground (an unusual sensation for someone used to wearing trousers).
=> draw
drop: drop: [OE] Drop, droop, and drip are closely related. Droop [13] was borrowed from Old Norse drūpa, which came from a Germanic base *drūp-. A variant of this, *drup-, produced Middle Danish drippe, the probable source of English drip [15], and a further variant, *drop-, lies behind Old English dropa, ancestor of modern English drop.

All three go back ultimately to a prehistoric Indo-European *dhreub-, source of Irish drucht ‘dew’. The English noun originally meant ‘globule of liquid’, and its related verb ‘fall in drops’. The main modern transitive sense, ‘allow to fall’, developed in the 14th century, giving English a single word for the concept of ‘letting fall’ not shared by, for example, French and German, which have to use phrases to express it: respectively, laisser tomber and fallen lassen.
=> drip, droop
enough: enough: [OE] Enough is a widespread word in the Germanic languages. German has genug, Dutch genoeg, and Swedish and Danish the reduced forms nog and nok. All go back to a prehistoric Germanic *ganōgaz, a compound formed from the collective prefix *ga- and an Indo-European element *nak- whose underlying meaning is probably ‘reach, attain’ (it occurs in Sanskrit na and Latin naniscī, both of which have that sense).
err: err: [14] Err, erratic [14], erroneous [14], and error [13] all go back to a prehistoric base *er-, which meant ‘wandering about’ (the semantic progression from ‘wandering’ to ‘making mistakes’ is reproduced in several other quite unrelated word groups in the Indo-European language family). This produced Gothic airzei ‘error’, Old High German irri ‘astray’ (source of modern German irre ‘angry’), Old English ierre ‘astray’, and Latin errāre ‘wander, make mistakes’ – from which, via Old French errer, English got err.
=> erratic, error
espouse: espouse: [15] Etymologically, to espouse something is the same as to sponsor it. Both words go back ultimately to Latin spondēre ‘promise solemnly’. From it developed late Latin spōnsāre, which produced Old French espouser, source of the English verb. It originally meant ‘promise to marry’, but this particular semantic strand has survived only in the related noun spouse, and by the 17th century the now familiar metaphorical sense ‘adopt and support a cause’ had developed.
=> sponsor, spouse
exact: exact: [15] The adjective exact ‘precise’ and the verb exact ‘demand with severity’ have undergone considerable semantic divergence over the centuries, but they both go back to the same source, the Latin verb exigere (from which English also got essay, examine, exigent [15], and exiguous [17]). This, a compound of the prefix ex- ‘out’ and agere ‘lead, drive’ (source of English act and agent), meant originally ‘drive out’, but in due course it developed the metaphorical senses ‘demand’ (preserved in the English verb), ‘weigh accurately’, and ‘bring to completion or perfection’.

These last two were taken up adjectivally in the Latin past participle exactus, from which English gets exact.
=> act, agent, essay, examine
factory: factory: [16] Latin factor, a derivative of facere ‘make’, meant ‘maker, doer’ (it was introduced into English in the 15th century as ‘agent’, but was not adopted as a mathematical term until the mid 17th century). Among its post-classical derivatives were late Latin factōrium ‘oil-press’ and medieval Latin factōria ‘establishment for factors or agents’.

It appears that the latter must have been the original source of the word factory in English, which at first meant ‘factorship, agency’. However, this does not fit in at all with its main modern sense ‘place where things are made’, first recorded in the early 17th century, which presumably must go back in some way to Latin factōrium.
=> fact
fancy: fancy: [15] Ultimately, fancy is the same word as fantasy [15], from which it emerged by a process of contraction and gradually became differentiated in meaning. Both go back originally to the Greek verb phaínein ‘show’ (source also of English diaphanous and phenomenon). From it was derived phantázein ‘make visible’, which produced the noun phantasíā ‘appearance, perception, imagination’ and its associated adjective phantastikós ‘able to make visible’ (and also incidentally phántasma, from which English gets phantasm and phantom).

The noun passed into English via Latin phantasia and Old French fantasie, bringing with it the original Greek senses and also some others which it had picked up on the way, including ‘caprice’. The semantic split between fantasy, which has basically taken the road of ‘imagination’, and fancy, which has tended more to ‘capricious preference’, was more or less complete by about 1600.

The quasi- Greek spelling phantasy was introduced in the 16th century, and has persisted for the noun, although the contemporary phantastic for the adjective has now died out. The Italian form fantasia was borrowed in the 18th century for a fanciful musical composition. (Fancy and fantasy have no etymological connection with the superficially similar fanatic, incidentally, which comes ultimately from Latin fānum ‘temple’.)
=> diaphanous, fantasy, pant, phantom
fare: fare: [OE] Both the verb fare (now only an archaism) and the noun go back ultimately to the Indo-European base *por- ‘going, passage’, which has produced a wide range of other English words, including emporium, ferry, fiord, ford, importune, opportunity, pore, and port. Its Germanic descendant was *fer- ‘go’, which produced in Old English the nouns fær and faru ‘journey’ and the verb faran ‘go on a journey’ (its German cousin fahren is still a standard verb for ‘travel’).

Of the noun’s current senses, ‘food’ (which seems to have originated in the notion of ‘how well one was faring’, ‘how one was provided for’) dates back to the 13th century, and ‘money paid for travelling’ to the 15th century. The derivative welfare dates from the 14th century.
=> emporium, ferry, fiord, ford, importune, opportunity, pore, port
fat: fat: [OE] Fat is one of a large Indo-European family of words denoting the substance ‘fat’ or its consequences in terms of obesity – the probably related Greek pímelē and Latin pinguis, for instance, signified respectively ‘lard’ and ‘fat’. The Germanic members of the family, which include German fett, Dutch vet, and Swedish fet as well as English fat, go back to a prehistoric Germanic *faitaz.
feat: feat: [14] Etymologically, a feat is ‘something that is done’. The word comes via Old French fet from Latin factum ‘deed’, a noun based on the past participle of facere ‘make, do’, and is hence a doublet of English fact – that is to say, both words go back to an identical source, but have become differentiated (in this case because fact came directly from Latin, whereas feat was filtered through Old French).
=> fact, factory, fashion, feasible, feature
fee: fee: [14] Fee is a word bequeathed to modern English by the feudal system (and indeed it is closely related etymologically to feudal). It came via Anglo-Norman fee from medieval Latin feodum or feudum (source also of feudal [17]). This denoted ‘land or other property whose use was granted as a reward for service’, a meaning which persists in its essentials in modern English ‘payment for work done’.

The secondary signification of fee, ‘feudal estate’, is no longer a live sense, but it is represented in the related fief [17], a descendant of feodum, which English acquired through French rather than Anglo-Norman. The ultimate derivation of the medieval Latin term itself is not altogether clear, although it is usually assigned to an unrecorded Frankish *fehuōd, literally ‘cattle-property’ (*fehu has related forms in Old English féoh ‘cattle, property’ and Old Norse fé ‘cattle, money’ – joint sources of the first syllable of English fellow – and in modern German viehe ‘cattle’; they all go back ultimately to Indo- European *peku-, ancestor of a wide range of words meaning ‘cattle’ which, since in former times cattle were symbolic of wealth, in many cases came to signify ‘property’ too).
=> fellow, feudal, fief
fierce: fierce: [13] Fierce has not always had exclusively negative connotations of ‘aggression’, although admittedly they do go back a long way. Its source, Latin ferus (which also gave English feral) meant originally ‘wild, untamed’, but it subsequently developed the metaphorical sense ‘uncultivated, savage, cruel’. However, when English acquired the word, via Anglo-Norman fers and Old French fiers, it was used for ‘brave’ and ‘proud’ as well as ‘wildly hostile or menacing’. ‘Brave’ died out in the 16th century, although across the Channel ‘proud’ has survived to become the only sense of modern French fiers.
=> feral
flail: flail: [OE] Flail is a distant relative of flagellation [15]. Both go back ultimately to Latin flagrum ‘whip’. This had a diminutive form flagellum, which in prehistoric times was borrowed into West Germanic as *flagil-. It is assumed that Old English inherited it as *flegil (although this is not actually recorded), which, reinforced in Middle English times by the related Old French flaiel, produced modern English flail. Flagellation comes from the derived Latin verb flagellāre ‘whip’.
=> flagellation