英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

aggravate [aggravate 词源字典]: aggravate: [16] Aggravate originally meant literally ‘to weigh down’ or ‘to make heavier’ (it was modelled on Latin aggravare ‘to make heavier’, which in turn was based on gravis ‘heavy’, source of English gravity and grief; its first cousin is aggrieve [13], which came via Old French agrever). From the first it was generally used in a metaphorical sense, and by the end of the 16th century the meaning ‘to make worse’ was well established. The sense ‘to annoy’, which some purists still object to, dates from at least the early 17th century.
=> grave, gravity, grief[aggravate etymology, aggravate origin, 英语词源]
aggregate: aggregate: [15] Etymologically, aggregate contains the notion of a collection of animals. It comes from greg-, the stem of the Latin noun grex ‘flock, herd’ (also the source of gregarious). This formed the basis of a verb aggregāre ‘collect together’, whose past participle aggregātus passed into English as aggregate. Latin grex is related to Greek agorā ‘open space, market place’, from which English gets agoraphobia.
=> agoraphobia, egregious, gregarious, segregate
aggression: aggression: [17] The violent associations of aggression have developed from the much milder notion of ‘approaching’ somebody. The Latin verb aggredī ‘attack’ was based on the prefix ad- ‘towards’ and gradī ‘walk’, a verb derived in its turn from the noun gradus ‘step’ (from which English gets, among many others, grade, gradual, and degree).
=> degree, grade, gradual
aggrieve: aggrieve: see aggravate
agree: agree: [14] Originally, if a thing ‘agreed you’, it was to your liking, it pleased you. This early meaning survives in the adjective agreeable [14], but the verb has meanwhile moved on via ‘to reconcile (people who have quarrelled)’ and ‘to come into accord’ to its commonest presentday sense, ‘to concur’. It comes from Old French agréer ‘to please’, which was based on the phrase a gré ‘to one’s liking’. Gré was descended from Latin grātum, a noun based on grātus ‘pleasing’, from which English also gets grace and grateful.
=> congratulate, grace, grateful, gratitude
ambergris: ambergris: [15] The original term for ambergris (a waxy material from the stomach of the sperm whale) was amber. But as confusion began to arise between the two substances amber and ambergris, amber came to be used for both in all the languages that had borrowed it from Arabic, thus compounding the bewilderment. The French solution was to differentiate ambergris as ambre gris, literally ‘grey amber’, and this eventually became the standard English term. (Later on, the contrastive term ambre jaune ‘yellow amber’ was coined for ‘amber’ in French.) Uncertainty over the identity of the second element, -gris, has led to some fanciful reformulations of the word.

In the 17th century, many people thought ambergris came from Greece – hence spellings such as amber-degrece and amber-greece. And until comparatively recently its somewhat greasy consistency encouraged the spelling ambergrease.
=> amber
autograph: autograph: [17] Greek auto- was a prefixal use of the adjective autós, meaning ‘same, self’. Many of the commonest auto- words in English, including autograph itself and also autocrat [19], automatic [18] (a derivative of automaton [17], which was formed from a hypothetical base *men- ‘think’ related to mental and mind), autonomy [17], and autopsy [17] (originally meaning ‘eye-witness’, and derived from Greek optós ‘seen’, source of English optic), are original Greek formations.

But the 19th and particularly the 20th century have seen a mass of new coinages, notably in scientific and technical terminology, including such familiar words as autism, autobiography, autoerotic, autofocus, autogiro, autoimmune, automotive, autosuggestion, and of course automobile (originally a French formation of the 1870s). Automobile has itself, of course, given rise to a completely new use for the auto- prefix, with the general connotation of ‘motorized transport’, as in autobus, autocar, autocycle, and the German autobahn.
bridegroom: bridegroom: see groom
calligraphy: calligraphy: see kaleidoscope
chagrin: chagrin: [17] The word chagrin first appeared in French in the 14th century as an adjective, meaning ‘sad, vexed’, a usage at first adopted into English: ‘My wife in a chagrin humour, she not being pleased with my kindness to either of them’, Samuel Pepys’s Diary 6 August 1666. It died out in English in the early 18th century, but the subsequently developed noun and verb have persisted. Etymologists now discount any connection with French chagrin ‘untanned leather’ (source of English shagreen [17]), which came from Turkish sagri.
choreography: choreography: [18] Choreography ‘arrangement of dances’ comes from French choréographie, which was based on Greek khoreíā ‘dance’, a derivative of khorós. (Source of English chorus, choir, and possibly also carol, this originally encompassed dancing as well as singing.) Khoreíā passed into Latin as chorea, applied in English to various muscular disorders (such as Huntington’s chorea); the usage probably originated in the Latin phrase chorea sancti Viti ‘St Vitus’s dance’.
=> carol, choir, chorea, chorus
conflagration: conflagration: see flagrant
congratulate: congratulate: see grateful
congregation: congregation: [14] Etymologically, a church’s congregation is comparable to a pastor’s flock. The word comes from Latin congregātiō, a noun derivative of congregāre ‘flock together’. This was a compound verb formed from the collective prefix com- and grex ‘flock, herd’ (source of English egregious and gregarious). Congregation was thus originally simply a ‘meeting, assembly’; its religious connotations arose from its frequent use in the 1611 translation of the Bible to render ‘solemn public assembly’. The verb congregate was independently borrowed in the 15th century.
=> aggregate, egregious, gregarious, segregate
congress: congress: [16] A congress is literally a ‘coming together’ – hence, a ‘meeting’. The word comes from Latin congressus, which was based on the past participial stem of congredī ‘come together’. This was a compound verb formed from the prefix com- ‘together’ and gradī ‘go, walk’ (a derivative of gradus ‘step’, from which English gets grade, gradual, and graduate). The application of the word to the US legislature dates from the 1770s.
=> grade, gradual, graduate, progress, transgress
congruent: congruent: [15] Etymologically, triangles that are congruent ‘come together’ or ‘agree’ – that is, are similar. The word comes from congruēns, the present participle of Latin congruere ‘come together, meet, agree’. This was a compound verb formed from the prefix com- ‘together’ and a verb, *gruere, not found elsewhere (some have linked it with Latin ruere ‘fall’ – ultimate source of English ruin – in which case congruere would have meant literally ‘fall together’, but others have seen a connection with Greek zakhrēēs ‘attacking violently’). Incongruous is a 17thcentury adoption from Latin incongruus.
couch grass: couch grass: see quick
degree: degree: [13] Etymologically, degree means ‘step down’, a sense revealed more clearly in its relative degrade [14]. It comes via Old French degre from Vulgar Latin *dēgradus, a compound noun formed from the prefix dē- ‘down’ and gradus ‘step’ (source of English gradual and a wide range of other words). The word’s modern meanings, such as ‘academic rank’ and ‘unit of temperature’, come from an underlying abstract notion of a hierarchy of steps or ranks. Degrade represents a parallel but distinct formation, originally coined as ecclesiastical Latin dēgradāre and passed into English via Old French degrader.
=> degrade, gradual, progress
denigrate: denigrate: [16] To denigrate people is literally to ‘blacken’ them. The word comes from Latin dēnigrāre ‘blacken’, a compound verb formed from the intensive prefix dē- and niger ‘black’. This adjective, which is of unknown origin, also produced French noir ‘black’ and Italian nero ‘black’, and is the source (via Spanish negro) of English negro [16] and the now taboo nigger [18]. Denigrate originally meant ‘physically turn something black’ as well as the metaphorical ‘defame, belittle’: ‘This lotion will denigrate the hairs of hoary heads’, Richard Tomlinson, Renodaeus’ Medicinal dispensatory 1657.
=> negro, nigger
digress: digress: see gradual
egregious: egregious: see segregate
engrave: engrave: see grave
engross: engross: see gross
filigree: filigree: [17] Etymologically, filigree describes very accurately how filigree was originally made: it was delicate ornamental work constructed from threads (Latin filum) and beads (Latin grānum ‘grain, seed’). The Italian descendants of these two Latin words were combined to form filigrana, which passed into English via French as filigrane. This gradually metamorphosed through filigreen to filigree.
=> file, grain
flagrant: flagrant: [15] Etymologically, flagrant means ‘burning, blazing’. It comes, via French, from the present participle of Latin flagrāre ‘burn’ (source of English conflagration [16]). This in turn went back to Indo-European *bhleg-, which also produced English flame. The use of flagrant for ‘shameless, shocking’, an 18th-century development, comes from the Latin phrase in flagrante delicto ‘red-handed’, literally ‘with the crime still blazing’.
=> conflagration, flame
geography: geography: [16] All the English ‘geo-’ words (geography, geology [18], geometry [14], etc) come ultimately from Greek gē ‘earth’, a word probably of pre-Indo-European origin, whose Homeric form gaia was used as the name of the Greek goddess of the earth. Geography denotes literally the ‘describing of the earth’; geometry the ‘measuring of the earth’ (from its early application to the measuring of land and surveying).
=> geology, geometry
grab: grab: [16] Grab is a Germanic word. It was probably borrowed from Middle Dutch or Middle Low German grabben. These were descendants of a prehistoric Germanic *grab-, which could well have been related to the *graip-, *grip- which produced grip, gripe, and grope.
=> grip, gripe, grope
grace: grace: [12] Latin grātus meant ‘pleasing’. Its most obvious English descendants are grateful, gratify, gratuity, etc, but it is also responsible for grace (not to mention the even better disguised agree). Its derived noun grātia ‘pleasure, favour, thanks’ passed into English via Old French grace. Gracious [13] comes ultimately from Latin grātiōsus; grateful [15] is an English formation. (The apparently similar gracile ‘slender’ [17], incidentally, is not etymologically related; it comes from Latin gracilis ‘slender’.)
=> agree, grateful
gradual: gradual: [16] Latin grādus ‘step’ has been a remarkably prolific source of English words. Beside grade [16] itself, it has contributed the derivatives gradation [16], gradient [19], gradual (from medieval Latin graduālis, literally ‘proceeding by steps’), graduate [15], and retrograde [14]. The derived verb gradī ‘walk, go’ has produced ingredient, and its past participial stem gress- has given, among others, aggression, congress, digress [16], progress [15], and transgress [16].

And degrade and degree are of the same parentage, the latter filtered through Old French. The origins of Latin grādus itself are not known.
=> aggression, congress, degrade, degree, digress, grade, gradient, ingredient, progress, transgress
graffiti: graffiti: [19] Although it denotes ‘writing’, graffiti has no etymological connection with Greek gráphein, source of English graphic. It comes from the plural of Italian graffito, a diminutive form of the noun graffio ‘scratching’. This was derived from the verb graffiare ‘scratch’, itself originally formed from graffio ‘hook’.
graft: graft: [15] Graft, in its original sense ‘plant part inserted into a living plant’ (the application to skin and other animal tissue is a late 19thcentury development), came from its resemblance in shape to a pencil. Greek graphíon meant ‘writing implement, stylus’ (it was a derivative of the verb gráphein ‘write’, source of English graphic). It passed via Latin graphium into Old French as grafe, gradually changing in its precise application with the advance of writing technology.

By the time it reached Old French it denoted a ‘pencil’, and it was then that the resemblance to two artificially united plant stems was noted and the metaphor born. English took the word over as graff in the late 14th century (it actually survived in that form into the 19th century), and within a hundred years had added a -t to the end to give modern English graft. Graft ‘corruption’, first recorded in mid 19th-century America, may be the same word, perhaps derived from the notion of a graft as an ‘insertion’, hence ‘something extra, on the side’. Graft ‘hard work’ [19], on the other hand, is probably a different word, perhaps based on the English dialect verb graft ‘dig’, an alteration of grave ‘dig’.
=> graphic
grain: grain: [13] Grain comes via Old French from Latin grānum ‘seed’. Its prehistoric Indo- European ancestor was *grnóm, literally ‘worndown particle’, which also produced English corn, and it has given English a remarkably wide range of related forms: not just obvious derivatives like granary [16], granule [17], and ingrained [16], but also garner [12] (originally a noun derived from Latin grānārium ‘granary’), gram ‘chick-pea’ [18] (from the Portuguese descendant of grānum, now mainly encountered in ‘gram flour’), grange, granite, gravy, grenade, and the second halves of filigree and pomegranate.
=> filigree, garner, granary, granite, gravy, grenade, ingrained, pomegranate
gram: gram: [18] Gram, or gramme as it is sometimes spelled, was borrowed at the end of the 18th century from French gramme, the term adopted in 1799 as the basic unit of weight in the metric system. The word itself goes back via late Latin gramma ‘small unit’ to Greek grámma (source of English grammar), which originally meant ‘letter of the alphabet’ but later came to be used for ‘small weight’.
=> grammar
grammar: grammar: [14] Etymologically, grammar is the ‘art of letters’. The word comes via Anglo- Norman gramere, Old French gramaire, and Latin grammatica from Greek grammatiké, a noun use of the adjective grammatikós ‘of letters’ (whence English grammatical [16]). This was a derivative of the noun grámma ‘something written’, hence ‘letter of the alphabet’, which was related to the verb gráphein ‘write’ (source of English graphic) and also gave English gram and the suffix -gram that appears in a wide range of English words, from anagram and diagram to telegram and kissagram.
=> glamour, gram, graphic
gramophone: gramophone: [19] The term gramophone was registered as a trademark in 1887 by the German-born American inventor Emil Berliner for a sound recording and reproducing device he had developed using a disc (as opposed to the cylinder of Edison’s phonograph). He coined it simply by reversing the elements of phonogram, a term adopted for a ‘sound recording’ in the early 1880s and composed of descendants of Greek phōné ‘voice, sound’ and grámma ‘something written’. It seems to have begun to give way to record player in the mid 1950s.
granary: granary: see grain
grand: grand: [16] The original Latin word for ‘big’ was magnus (as in magnify, magnitude, etc). However, it also had grandis. This not only denoted great physical size; it also had connotations of moral greatness or sublimity, and in addition often carried the specialized meaning ‘full-grown’. This last, together with a possibly etymologically connected Greek brénthos ‘pride’ and Old Church Slavonic gradi ‘breast’ suggest that its underlying meaning may be ‘swelling’.

French (grand) and Italian and Spanish (grande) have taken it over as their main adjective for ‘big’, but in English it remains a more specialized word, for things or people that are ‘great’ or ‘imposing’. Its use for denoting family relationships separated by two generations, as in grandmother, was adopted from Old French, and goes back, in the case of grandame and grandsire, to the 13th century, well before the independent adjective grand itself was borrowed.

But the underlying notion is as old as the Greeks and Romans, who used mégas and magnus in the same way.
grand prix: grand prix: see prize
grange: grange: [13] Originally, a grange was ‘somewhere for storing grain’, a ‘barn’. The word comes via Old French grange from medieval Latin grānica, a noun use of an unrecorded adjective *grānicus ‘of grain’, which was derived from grānum ‘grain, seed’ (source of English grain). Of its present-day meanings, ‘farm-house’ developed in the 14th century, ‘country house’ in the 16th century.
=> grain
granite: granite: [17] Etymologically, granite is ‘grainy or granular rock’. The word was borrowed from Italian granito, a derivative of grano ‘grain’ (which is related to English grain). (English acquired the Italian feminine form granita in the 19th century as a term for a granular form of water ice.)
=> grain
grant: grant: [13] To grant something etymologically implies an element of ‘belief’ or ‘trust’, although there is virtually no semantic trace of these left in the word today. Its ultimate source was crēdens, the present participle of Latin crēdere ‘believe’ (source of English credence, credible, etc). This was used as the basis of a new Vulgar Latin verb *crēdentāre, which passed into Old French as creanter ‘insure, guarantee’. Its later variant greanter or granter gave English grant.
=> credence, credible, credit
grape: grape: [13] Not surprisingly, given the northerliness of the British Isles, English does not have its own native word for ‘grape’. In Old English it was was called wīnberige, literally ‘wineberry’, and the Old French word grape which Middle English borrowed as grape meant ‘bunch of grapes’, not ‘grape’. It was probably a derivative of the verb graper ‘gather grapes’, which itself was based on the noun grape ‘hook’ (a relative of English cramp, crampon, and grapnel [14]).

The underlying notion is of a bunch of grapes being gathered with a sort of pruning hook. (The use of a word that originally meant ‘bunch’ for ‘grape’ is in fact fairly common: Czech hrozen, Romanian stugure, German traube, and Lithuanian keke all follow the same pattern, as does French raisin, source of English raisin.)
=> cramp, crampon, grapnel
graphic: graphic: [17] The profoundest influence that Greek gráphein ‘write’ has had on English has no doubt been through its combining form -graphos, which has provided us with a whole host of words, both original Greek formations and new English ones, from autograph to telegraph. But descendants in their own right include graphic (which came via Latin graphicus from the Greek derivative graphikós), graphite [18] (originally coined in German as graphit, from its being used in writing implements), and graph [19] (short for graphic formular, a term used in chemistry for a diagram representing in lines the relationship between elements).

Greek gráphein itself originally meant ‘scratch’ (it is etymologically related to English carve); it was applied to early methods of writing, by scratching on clay tablets with a stylus, and kept its job when writing technology moved on.
=> carve, graft, graph, graphite
grapnel: grapnel: see grape
grass: grass: [OE] Reflecting its status as the commonest and most obvious of plants (and, for agricultural communities, the most important), grass etymologically simply means ‘that which grows’. It comes from *grō-, *gra-, the prehistoric Germanic base which also produced grow (and green). This gave the noun *grasam, from which German and Dutch get gras, Swedish gräs, and English grass.
=> graze, green, grow
grate: grate: Grate ‘framework for holding burning fuel’ [14] and grate ‘rub’ [15] are different words. The former comes via Old French grate ‘grille’ and Vulgar Latin *grāta from Latin crātis ‘wickerwork, hurdle’. Grate ‘rub’ is ultimately Germanic (its ultimate ancestor was the Germanic verb *krattōn, source of modern German kratzen ‘scratch’), but it reached English via Old French grater ‘scrape’. Gratin [19] comes from the derived French noun gratin.
=> gratin
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
gratin: gratin: see grate
grave: grave: Modern English has essentially two words grave. Grave ‘burial place’ goes back ultimately to prehistoric Indo-European *ghrebh- ‘dig’, which also produced Latvian grebt ‘hollow out’ and Old Church Slavonic pogreti ‘bury’. Its Germanic descendant had variants *grōb- (source of groove), *grub- (whence grub), and *grab-.

This last formed the basis of *graban, from which have come the verbs for ‘dig’ in most Germanic languages, including German graben, Dutch graven, Swedish gräva, and Danish grave. The English member of the family, grave, is now virtually obsolete as a verb (although its derivative engrave [16] survives); but its nominal relative grave, also formed from *grab-, is still very much with us. Grave ‘serious’ [16] comes via Old French grave from Latin gravis ‘heavy, important’, source also of English gravity and grief.

Its application to a backward-leaning accent (as in è) comes from the original use of such an accent-mark to indicate low or deep intonation.
=> engrave, groove, grub; gravity, grief
gravel: gravel: [13] Gravel is of Celtic origin. It has been traced to a prehistoric Celtic *gravo- ‘gravel’, never actually recorded but deduced from Breton grouan and Cornish grow ‘soft granite’. French borrowed it as grave ‘gravel, pebbles’ (perhaps the source of the English verb grave ‘clean a ship’s bottom’ [15], now encountered virtually only in graving dock, from the notion of ships being hauled up on to the pebbles of the seashore for cleaning). The Old French diminutive of grave was gravelle – whence English gravel.