英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

accomplice: accomplice: [15] This word was borrowed into English (from French) as complice (and complice stayed in common usage until late in the 19th century). It comes from Latin complex, which is related to English complicated, and originally meant simply ‘an associate’, without any pejorative associations. The form accomplice first appears on the scene in the late 15th century (the first record of it is in William Caxton’s Charles the Great), and it probably arose through a misanalysis of complice preceded by the indefinite article (a complice) as acomplice. It may also have been influenced by accomplish or accompany.
=> complicated
album: album: [17] Latin albus ‘white’ has been the source of a variety of English words: alb ‘ecclesiastical tunic’ [OE], albedo ‘reflective power’ [19], Albion [13], an old word for Britain, probably with reference to its white cliffs, albumen ‘white of egg’ [16], and auburn, as well as albino. Album is a nominalization of the neuter form of the adjective, which was used in classical times for a blank, or white, tablet on which public notices were inscribed.

Its original adoption in the modern era seems to have been in Germany, where scholars kept an album amicorum ‘album of friends’ in which to collect colleagues’ signatures. This notion of an autograph book continues in Dr Johnson’s definition of album in his Dictionary 1755: ‘a book in which foreigners have long been accustomed to insert the autographs of celebrated people’, but gradually it became a repository for all sorts of souvenirs, including in due course photographs.
=> alb, albedo, albino, albumen, auburn, daub
ally: ally: [13] The verb ally was borrowed into English from Old French alier, an alteration of aleier (a different development of the Old French word was aloier, which English acquired as alloy). This came from Latin alligāre ‘bind one thing to another’, a derivative of ligāre ‘tie’; hence the idea etymologically contained in being ‘allied’ is of having a bond with somebody else.

The noun ally seems originally to have been independently borrowed from Old French allié in the 14th century, with the meaning ‘relative’. The more common modern sense, ‘allied person or country’, appeared in the 15th century, and is probably a direct derivative of the English verb.
=> alloy, ligament
anode: anode: [19] The term anode, meaning ‘positive electrode’, appears to have been introduced by the English philosopher William Whewell around 1834. It was based on Greek ánodos ‘way up’, a compound noun formed from aná- ‘up’ and hodós ‘way’ (also represented in exodus ‘way out’ and odometer ‘instrument for measuring distance travelled’, and possibly related to Latin cēdere, source of English cede and a host of derived words). It specifically contrasts with cathode, which means literally ‘way down’.
=> exodus, odometer
bathos: bathos: [18] Bathos, the descent from the sublime to the commonplace, means etymologically ‘depth’. It represents Greek báthos, a derivative of the adjective bathús ‘deep’ (which has also given English such technical terms as bathyal ‘of the deep sea’, bathymetry, bathyscaphe, and bathysphere). The use of the word in English seems to have been initiated by the poet Alexander Pope (1688–1744), in his Bathos.
bitter: bitter: [OE] Old English biter appears to have come from *bit-, the short-vowel version of *bīt-, source of bite. Its original meaning would thus have been ‘biting’, and although there do not seem to be any traces of this left in the historical record, the sense development to ‘acrid-tasting’ is fairly straightforward (compare the similar case of sharp).

It seems likely that the bitter of ‘bitter end’ comes from a different source altogether, although in its current meaning it appears to have been influenced by the adjective bitter. A bitter was originally a ‘turn of a cable round the bitts’, and a bitt was a ‘post on the deck of a ship for fastening cables to’. It is not clear where bitt came from, although it was probably originally a seafarer’s term from the north German coast, and it may be related to English boat.

Thus in the first instance ‘to the bitter end’ probably meant ‘to the very end, as far as it is possible to go’.
=> bite
bronze: bronze: [18] Until the 18th century, copper alloys were lumped together under the general term brass. Bronze seems originally to have been introduced as a specialist term for ancient artefacts made from the metal, but the modern distinction tends to be between brass (alloy of copper and zinc) and bronze (cooper and tin). The word comes via French from Italian bronzo, but its ultimate source is not clear.

Perhaps the likeliest candidate is Persian birinj, pirinj ‘copper’, but it has also been speculated that it comes via medieval Greek brontésion from medieval Latin aes brundisium, literally ‘brass of Brindisi’, a port on the Adriatic coast of Italy where in antiquity bronze mirrors were made.
bunting: bunting: Bunting ‘bird’ [13] and bunting ‘flags’ [18] are presumably two distinct words, although in neither case do we really know where they come from. There was a now obsolete English adjective bunting, first recorded in the 16th century, which meant ‘plump, rounded, short and thick’ (could a subliminal memory of it have been in Frank Richards’s mind when he named Billy Bunter?).

Perhaps the small plump bird, the bunting, was called after this. The adjective probably came from an obsolete verb bunt, which meant (of a sail) ‘swell, billow’, but since we do not know where that came from, it does not get us very much further. As for bunting ‘flags’, the word originally referred to a loosely woven fabric from which they were made, and it has been conjectured that it came from the English dialect verb bunt ‘sift’, such cloth having perhaps once been used for sifting flour.
cathode: cathode: [19] The term cathode, meaning ‘negative electrode’, appears to have been introduced by the English philosopher William Whewell around 1834. It was based on Greek káthodos ‘way down’, a compound formed from katá- ‘down’ and hodós ‘way’ (also represented in exodus ‘way out’ and odometer ‘instrument for measuring distance travelled’, and possibly related to Latin cēdere, source of English cede and a host of derived words). It specifically contrasts with anode, which means literally ‘way up’.
=> exodus, odometer
crony: crony: [17] Crony originated as a piece of Cambridge university slang. Originally written chrony, it was based on Greek khrónios ‘longlasting’, a derivative of khrónos ‘time’ (source of English chronicle, chronology, chronic, etc), and seems to have been intended to mean ‘friend of long-standing’, or perhaps ‘contemporary’. The first recorded reference to it is in the diary of Samuel Pepys, a Cambridge man: ‘Jack Cole, my old school-fellow … who was a great chrony of mine’, 30 May 1665.
=> chronic, chronicle, chronology
drub: drub: [17] Drub appears to have been introduced to the English language by Sir Thomas Herbert (1606–82), a traveller in the Orient, who used the word several times in his Relation of some yeares travaile into Afrique and the greater Asia 1634: ‘[The pasha] made the Petitioner be almost drub’d to death’. It came from Arabic dáraraba, which meant not just ‘beat’, but also specifically ‘bastinado’ – ‘beat on the soles of the feet as a punishment or torture’.
flannel: flannel: [14] Flannel is probably one of the few Welsh contributions to the English language. It appears to be an alteration of Middle English flanen ‘sackcloth’, which was borrowed from Welsh gwlanen ‘woollen cloth’, a derivative of gwlān ‘wool’. This in turn is related to Latin lāna ‘wool’ and English wool. It is not clear where the British colloquial sense ‘insincere talk’ (which seems to date from the 1920s) comes from, although it may well have been inspired by Shakespeare’s unflattering application of the word to a Welshman in the Merry Wives of Windsor 1598: ‘I am not able to answer the Welsh flannel’, says Falstaff of Hugh Evans, a Welsh parson.
=> wool
flask: flask: [14] English acquired flask via French flasque from medieval Latin flasca, a word of uncertain origin. It occurs widely in the Germanic languages (German has flasche, for instance, and Dutch vlesch, and the related word flasce existed in Old English, although it did not survive into Middle English), but it is not clear whether the medieval Latin word was borrowed from Germanic, or whether the Germanic languages originally got it from a Latin word (Latin vāsculum ‘small vessel’, a diminutive form of vās – whence English vascular, vase, and vessel – has been suggested as a source).

The sense ‘gunpowder container’, first recorded in the 16th century, may have been inspired by Italian fiasco (source of English fiasco), which came from a variant medieval Latin form flascō. This also produced English flagon [15].
=> fiasco, flagon
font: font: English has two words font. The older, ‘basin for baptismal water’ [OE], comes from font-, the stem of Latin fons ‘spring, fountain’ (from which English also gets fountain). It may well have been introduced into the language via Old Irish fant or font (it was often spelled fant in Old English). Font ‘set of type’ [16] (or fount, as it is often also spelled) was borrowed from French fonte, a derivative of fondre ‘melt’ (whence also English fondant, fondu, and foundry).
=> fountain; fondant, foundry
foul: foul: [OE] The underlying meaning of foul is probably ‘rotten, putrid’, with overtones of ‘evilsmelling’. It goes back to an Indo-European *pu-, which may originally have been inspired by the same reaction as produced the English exclamation of disgust at a bad smell, pooh. Amongst its other off-spring were Latin pūs, source of English pus, purulent, and supurate, and Latin putridus, source of English putrid.

Its Germanic descendant was *fu-, on which the adjective *fūlaz was based. This produced German faul ‘rotten, lazy’, Dutch vuil ‘dirty’, and English foul, and also the derived noun filth [OE]. Defile ‘make dirty’ is not directly related, but its form was influenced by the now obsolete verb befile, which was connected with foul.
=> filth, pus, putrid, suppurate
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
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’.
germane: germane: [19] Germane is an alteration of german ‘closely related’ [14], which now survives only in the rather archaic expression cousin-german. This came via Old French germain from Latin germānus, which meant ‘of the same race’ (it was a derivative of germen ‘sprout, offspring’, from which English gets germ). The use of germane for ‘relevant’ as opposed to simply ‘related’ seems to have been inspired by Hamlet’s comment that a remark of Osric’s would have been ‘more german to the matter, if we could carry cannon by our sides’. (The nationality term German [16], incidentally, is probably of Celtic origin, and has no etymological connection with germane.)
=> germ
goon: goon: [20] The antecedents of goon are murky. It may have been inspired by goony ‘simpleton’, which is first recorded in the 1890s and which may well be the same word as the much earlier gony with the same meaning, which in turn goes right back to the 16th century and could be related to Scottish gonyel ‘fool’. An ultimate connection with the obsolete verb gane ‘yawn’ has been suggested, but all we know for certain about goon itself is that it was introduced to the English language at large in America in 1921 by Frederick Lewis Allen, writing in Harper’s Magazine.

He claimed that it had been in use in his family for some years, with the meaning ‘stolid person’, but he had no suggestions to offer as to its origins. It then disappears from the record until the 1930s, when its resurrection seems to have been set in train by ‘Alice the Goon’, a slow-witted, muscular character in the comic strip ‘Thimble Theater, featuring Popeye’ by E.C. Segar, which first came out in 1933 (it is not clear whether Segar knew about the earlier, 1920s usage).

Taken up enthusiastically in student slang, by the end of the decade goon was firmly established in the senses ‘fool’ and ‘thug, strong-arm man’. During World War II it was applied by Allied prisoners of war to their German guards, and it has often been suggested that that was the inspiration for the goon of The Goon Show (originally Crazy People), the popular BBC radio comedy programme of the 1950s.

Its creator, Spike Milligan, denied this, and said that he got the idea from the ‘Goon’ of the Popeye cartoons. Either way, it is the show’s particular brand of comical surreality that colours today’s meaning of the word.
grub: grub: [13] Grub ‘dig’ comes ultimately from prehistoric Germanic *grub-, perhaps via Old English *grybban, although no record of such a verb has actually come down to us (the related Germanic *grab- gave English grave, while a further variant *grōb- produced groove [15]). The relationship of grub ‘dig’ to the various noun uses of the word is far from clear. Grub ‘larva’, first recorded in the 15th century, may have been inspired by the notion of larvae digging their way through wood or earth, but equally it could be connected (via the idea of ‘smallness’) with the contemporary but now obsolete grub ‘short, dwarfish fellow’ – an entirely mysterious word. Grub ‘food’, which dates from the 17th century, is usually said to have been suggested by birds’ partiality for grubs or larvae as part of their diet.

And in the 19th century a grub was also a ‘dirty child’ – perhaps originally one who got dirty by digging or grubbing around in the earth – which may have been the source of grubby ‘dirty’ [19].
=> grave, groove
hair: hair: [OE] No general Indo-European term for ‘hair’ has come down to us. All the ‘hair’-words in modern European languages are descended from terms for particular types of hair – hair on the head, hair on other parts of the body, animal hair – or for single hairs or hair collectively, and indeed many retain these specialized meanings: French cheveu, for instance, means ‘hair of the head’, whereas poil denotes ‘body hair’ or ‘animal hair’.

In the case of English hair, unfortunately, it is not clear which of these categories originally applied, although some have suggested a connection with Lithuanian serys ‘brush’, which might indicate that the prehistoric ancestor of hair was a ‘bristly’ word. The furthest back in time we can trace it is to West and North Germanic *khǣram, source also of German, Dutch, and Danish haar and Swedish hår.

The slang use of hairy for ‘difficult’ is first recorded in the mid 19th century, in an erudite context that suggests that it may have been inspired by Latin horridus (source of English horrid), which originally meant (of hair) ‘standing on end’. Its current use, in which ‘difficult’ passes into ‘dangerous’, seems to have emerged in the 1960s, and was presumably based on hair-raising, which dates from around 1900.

It is fascinatingly foreshadowed by harsh, which is a derivative of hair and originally meant ‘hairy’.
ham: ham: [OE] The etymological meaning of ham is ‘bend’ – it comes from Germanic *kham- ‘be crooked’ – and up until the 16th century it denoted exclusively the ‘part of the leg at the back of the knee’ (a portion of the anatomy now without a word of its own in English). Hamstring [16] reflects this original meaning. From the mid-16th century, it gradually extended semantically to ‘back of the thigh’ and hence ‘thigh’ generally, and by the 17th century it was being used for the ‘thigh of a slaughtered animal, especially a pig, preserved and used for food’. Ham in the sense ‘performer who overacts’, first recorded in the late 19th century, apparently comes from an earlier hamfatter ‘bad actor’, which may have been inspired by the Negro minstrel song ‘The Ham-fat Man’.
insect: insect: [17] The Greek word for ‘insect’ was éntomon (source of English entomology [18]). It was derived from entémnein ‘cut up’, a compound verb formed from en- ‘in’ and témnein ‘cut’ (a close relative of English tome), and denoted literally ‘creature divided up into segments’. The term was translated literally into Latin as insectum (originally the past participle of insecāre, a compound verb formed from inand secāre ‘cut’), and seems to have been introduced into English in Philemon Holland’s translation of Pliny’s Natural History 1601.
=> section
jump: jump: [16] Until the early modern English period, the words for ‘jump’ were leap and spring. Then, apparently out of nowhere, the verb jump appeared. Its provenance has never been satisfactorily explained, and etymologists fall back on the notion that it may originally have been intended to suggest the sound of jumping feet hitting the ground (the similar-sounding bump and thump are used to support this theory).

And certainly one of the earliest known instances of the word’s use connotes as much ‘making heavy contact’ as ‘rising’: ‘The said anchor held us from jumping and beating upon the said rock’, Sir Richard Guylforde, Pilgrimage to the Holy Land 1511. Jumper ‘sweater’ [19], incidentally, appears to have no etymological connection with jump. It was probably derived from an earlier dialectal jump or jup, which denoted a short coat for men or a sort of woman’s underbodice.

This in turn was borrowed from French juppe, a variant of jupe ‘skirt’, whose ultimate source was Arabic jubbah, the name of a sort of loose outer garment.
leap year: leap year: [14] The inspiration for the term leap year is probably simply that in such a year the day on which any given date falls ‘jumps’ one day ahead of where it would have been in an ordinary year. The metaphorical application of the notion of ‘jumping’ to this phenomenon predates the first record of the term leap year: medieval Latin, for instance, used the term saltus lunae ‘moon’s jump’ for the nineteen-yearly omission of a day from the lunar calendar, and this was translated into Old English as mōnan hlyp ‘moon’s leap’.
mollusc: mollusc: [18] Etymologically, a mollusc is a ‘soft’ creature. The word comes ultimately from Latin molluscus ‘soft’, a derivative of mollis ‘soft’. In classical times it was used as a noun for various ‘soft’ things, such as a sort of thinshelled nut and a species of fungus that grew from maple trees, but its application to a range of invertebrate animals seems to have been introduced by the Swedish naturalist Linnaeus in the mid-18th century.

Latin mollis (source also of English mollify [15]) goes back ultimately to Indo-European *mel-, *mol-, *ml- ‘grind’, which also produced English meal ‘flour’, mill, and molar.
=> meal, melt, mild, mill, molar, mollify
nerd: nerd: [20] It seems likely that nerd, a term for a dull, socially inept or otherwise obnoxious person that appeared in US slang in the early 1950s, was inspired by a whimsical creature called a ‘nerd’ that was invented by the American children’s author ‘Dr Seuss’ (Theodore Seuss Geisel (1904–91)) and introduced by him in his book If I Ran the Zoo (1950): ‘And then, just to show them, I’ll sail to Ka-Troo And Bring Back an It-Kutch, a Preep and a Proo, a Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker, too!’ In thinking up the word he may have been influenced by Mortimer Snerd, the name of a dummy used by the American ventriloquist Edgar Bergen.
pantechnicon: pantechnicon: [19] The original Pantechnicon was a huge complex of warehouses, wine vaults, and other storage facilities in Motcomb Street, in London’s Belgravia. Built in 1830 and supposed to be fireproof, it was almost totally destroyed by fire in 1874. It seems originally to have been intended to be a bazaar, and its name was coined from the prefix pan- ‘all’ and Greek tekhnikón, the neuter form of tekhnikós ‘artistic’, denoting that all sorts of manufactured wares were to be bought there.

But it was its role as a furniture repository that brought it into the general language. Removal vans taking furniture there came to be known as pantechnicon vans, and by the 1890s pantechnicon was a generic term for ‘removal vans’.
=> architect, technical
quid: quid: English has two words quid. The colloquial term for a ‘pound’ appears to be the same word as Latin quid ‘something’, and may have been inspired by the expression quid pro quo [16], literally ‘something for something’. Quid ‘piece of chewing tobacco’ [18] is a variant of cud.
=> cud
ratchet: ratchet: [17] Ratchet was originally acquired, in the form rochet, from French rochet. This was a diminutive form descended ultimately from Frankish *rokko ‘spool’, which is related to English rocket. The notion of having teeth, which is central to the idea of a ratchet, therefore appears to be historically secondary; it presumably arose from the addition of ‘teeth’ to a rotating ‘spool’ or ‘spindle’ in a machine. The change from rochet to ratchet, which began in the 18th century, may have been influenced by German ratsch ‘ratchet’.
=> rocket
ravine: ravine: [15] Ravine and the now seldom encountered rapine ‘plunder’ [15] are essentially the same word. Both come ultimately from Latin rapīna ‘plunder’, a derivative of rapere ‘seize by force’ (from which English gets rape, rapid, rapture, ravenous, etc). This passed directly into English via Old French as rapine, but a variant Old French form also developed, ravine, whose meaning appears to have been influenced by Latin rapidus ‘rapid’.

It denoted ‘violent rush, impetus’ – which is how it was used in its brief and very spasmodic career in Middle English. It did not become firmly established as an English word until the 19th century, when it was reborrowed from French in the sense ‘gorge’ – originally as carved out by a ‘violent rush’ or torrent of water.
=> rape, rapine, rapture
seek: seek: [OE] Seek has several Germanic relatives – German suchen, Swedish söka, Danish søge, etc – which point back to a prehistoric Germanic ancestor *sōkjan. The base from which this was derived, *sōk-, went back to an Indo-European *sāg-, which also produced (via Latin) English presage [14] and sagacious [17]. If Old English sēcan had developed in the ordinary way, it would have become modern English seech, not seek. For various reasons it did not, but we can see how it would have been in its derivative beseech [12].
=> beseech, presage, sagacious, sake
shark: shark: [16] The origins of the word shark are obscure. It appears to have been introduced to English in the late 1560s by members of Sir John Hawkins’ expedition (a ballad of 1569 recorded ‘There is no proper name for [the fish] that I know, but that certain men of Captain Hawkins’s doth call it a shark’), but it is not known where they got it from. A resemblance to Austrian dialect schirk ‘sturgeon’ has been noted. Also not clear is whether shark ‘swindler’ (first recorded in the 18th century) is the same word; an alternative possibility is that it came from German schurke ‘scoundrel’.
wig: wig: [17] Wig is short for periwig [16], which in turn is an alteration of perwike, a now defunct variant of peruke [16]; and peruke came via French perruque from Italian perrucca, a word of unknown origin. Wigging ‘scolding’, first recorded at the beginning of the 19th century, may have been inspired by the notion of being told off by a bigwig [18], etymologically a ‘highranking bewigged dignitary’.
=> periwig, peruke
AC/DC (adj.): electronics abbreviation of alternating current/direct current, by 1898. As slang for "bisexual," 1959, said to have been in use orally from c. 1940; the notion is of working both ways.
AIDS (n.): 1982, acronym formed from acquired immune deficiency syndrome. AIDS cocktail attested by 1997, the thing itself said to have been in use from 1995.
Albion: ancient name of England, Old English, from Latin, sometimes said to be from the non-Indo-European base *alb "mountain," which also is suggested as the source of Latin Alpes "Alps," Albania, and Alba, an Irish name for "Scotland." But more likely from Latin albus "white" (see alb), which would be an apt description of the chalk cliffs of the island's southern coast.
Breoton is garsecges ealond, ðæt wæs iu geara Albion haten. [translation of Bede's "Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum," c.900 C.E.]
Perfidious Albion translates French rhetorical phrase la perfide Albion, said to have been in use since 16c. but popularized by Napoleon I in the recruiting drive of 1813, a reference to the supposedly treacherous policies of Britain when dealing with foreign powers.
ankle (n.): Old English ancleow "ankle," from PIE root *ang-/*ank- "to bend" (see angle (n.)). The modern form seems to have been influenced by Old Norse ökkla or Old Frisian ankel, which are immediately from the Proto-Germanic form of the root (cognates: Middle High German anke "joint," German Enke "ankle"); the second element in the Old English, Old Norse and Old Frisian forms perhaps suggests claw (compare Dutch anklaauw), or it may be from influence of cneow "knee," or it may be diminutive suffix -el. Middle English writers distinguished inner ankle projection (hel of the ancle) from the outer (utter or utward).
Big Mac: trademark name (McDonald's Corp.) of a type of hamburger sandwich, patented 1974 but alleged to have been in use from 1957.
bigot (n.): 1590s, "sanctimonious person, religious hypocrite," from French bigot (12c.), which is of unknown origin. Earliest French use of the word is as the name of a people apparently in southern Gaul, which led to the now-doubtful, on phonetic grounds, theory that the word comes from Visigothus. The typical use in Old French seems to have been as a derogatory nickname for Normans, the old theory (not universally accepted) being that it springs from their frequent use of the Germanic oath bi God. But OED dismisses in a three-exclamation-mark fury one fanciful version of the "by god" theory as "absurdly incongruous with facts." At the end, not much is left standing except Spanish bigote "mustache," which also has been proposed but not explained, and the chief virtue of which as a source seems to be there is no evidence for or against it.

In support of the "by God" theory, as a surname Bigott, Bygott are attested in Normandy and in England from the 11c., and French name etymology sources (such as Dauzat) explain it as a derogatory name applied by the French to the Normans and representing "by god." The English were known as goddamns 200 years later in Joan of Arc's France, and during World War I Americans serving in France were said to be known as les sommobiches (see also son of a bitch). But the sense development in bigot is difficult to explain. According to Donkin, the modern use first appears in French 16c. This and the earliest English sense, "religious hypocrite," especially a female one, might have been influenced by beguine and the words that cluster around it. Sense extended 1680s to other than religious opinions.
bong (n.): "water pipe for marijuana," 1960s, U.S. slang, said to have been introduced by Vietnam War veterans, said to be from Thai baung, literally "cylindrical wooden tube."
brinkmanship (n.): also brinksmanship, with parasitic -s- and construction based on salesmanship, sportsmanship, etc.; from brink (the image of the brink of war dates to at least 1840).

Associated with the policies advocated by John Foster Dulles (1888-1959), U.S. Secretary of State 1953-1959. The word springs from Dulles' philosophy as outlined in a magazine interview [with Time-Life Washington bureau chief James Shepley] early 1956:
The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the necessary art. If you cannot master it, you inevitably get into war. If you try to run away from it, if you are scared to go to the brink, you are lost.
The quote was widely criticized by the Eisenhower Administration's opponents, and the first attested use of brinkmanship seems to have been in such a context, a few weeks after the magazine appeared, by Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson criticizing Dulles for "boasting of his brinkmanship, ... the art of bringing us to the edge of the nuclear abyss."
Byblos: ancient Phoenician port (modern Jebeil, Lebanon) from which Egyptian papyrus was exported to Greece. The name probably is a Greek corruption of Phoenician Gebhal, said to mean literally "frontier town" (compare Hebrew gebhul "frontier, boundary," Arabic jabal "mountain"), or perhaps it is Canaanite gubla "mountain." The Greek name also might have been influenced by, or come from, an Egyptian word for "papyrus."
cahoots (n.): 1829, American English, of unknown origin; said to be perhaps from French cahute "cabin, hut" (12c.), but U.S. sources credit it to French cohorte (see cohort), a word said to have been in use in the U.S. South and West with a sense of "companions, confederates."
California: name of an imaginary realm in "Las sergas de Esplandián" ("Exploits of Espladán"), a romance by Spanish writer Garci Ordóñez de Montalvo, published in 1510. It was a sequel to his "Amadis de Gaula," and was said to have been influential among Spanish explorers of the New World. It could have led them to misidentify Baja California as this mythical land and to mistake it for an island. The Amadis tales are the Iberian equivalent of the Arthurian romances; they are older than 1510 (traces of them have been found mid-14c.) and were wildly popular. That conquistadors and sailors would have known the story in all its imaginative detail is hardly surprising.
Amadis de Gaula ... set a fashion: all later Spanish writers of books of chivalry adopted the machinery of Amadis de Gaula. Later knights were not less brave (they could not be braver than) Amadis; heroines were not less lovely (they could not be lovelier) than Oriana; there was nothing for it but to make the dragons more appalling, the giants larger, the wizards craftier, the magic castles more inaccessible, the enchanted lakes deeper. Subsequent books of chivalry are simple variants of the types in Amadis de Gaula: Cervantes made his barber describe it as 'the best of all books of this kind.' This verdict is essentially just. Amadis de Gaula was read everywhere, especially in the French version of Herberay des Essarts. It was done into Hebrew during the sixteenth century, and attracted readers as different as St Ignatius of Loyola and Henry of Navarre. Its vogue perhaps somewhat exceeded its merit, but its merits are not inconsiderable. [James Fitzmaurice-Kelly, "Spanish Literature," 1922 edition]
Where Montalvo got the name and what it means, if anything, is a mystery. Californian is attested from 1785. The element Californium (1950) was named in reference to University of California, where it was discovered.
canoodle (v.): "to indulge in caresses and fondling endearments" [OED], by 1850s, said to be U.S. slang, of uncertain origin. The earliest known sources are British, but they tend to identify the word as American. In the 1830s it seems to have been in use in Britain in a sense of "cheat" or "overpower." Related: Canoodled; canoodling.
Chicano (n.): 1947, from Mexican Spanish dialectal pronunciation of Mexicano "Mexican," with loss of initial unaccented syllable [Barnhart]. Said to have been in use among Mexican-Americans from c. 1911. Probably influenced by Spanish chico "boy," also used as a nickname. The adjective in English is attested by 1967. Fem. form is Chicana.
cigar (n.): 1730, from Spanish cigarro (source also of French cigare), probably from Maya sicar "to smoke rolled tobacco leaves," from si'c "tobacco;" or from or influenced by Spanish cigarra "grasshopper, cicada" (on resemblance of shape), from Vulgar Latin *cicala (source also of French cigale, Italian cigala). Cigar-box is from 1819; cigar-store from 1839; the wooden cigar-store Indian is from 1879, American English, but wooden images of feathered Indians or Negroes are mentioned outside tobacconists' shops in England by 1852, and are said to have been in earlier use on the Continent.
Blackamoors and other dark-skinned foreigners have always possessed considerable attractions as signs for tobacconists, and sometimes also for public-houses. Negroes, with feathered headdresses and kilts, smoking pipes, are to be seen outside tobacco shops on the Continent, as well as in England. [Jacob Larwood and John Camden Hotten, "The History of Signboards From the Earliest Times to the Present Day," London, 1867]
clarinet (n.): 1768, from French clarinette (18c.), diminutive of clarine "little bell" (16c.), noun use of fem. of adjective clarin (which also was used as a noun, "trumpet, clarion"), from clair, cler (see clear (adj.)). Alternative form clarionet is attested from 1784.

The instrument, a modification of the medieval shawm, said to have been invented c. 1700 by J.C. Denner of Nuremberg, Germany. A recognized orchestral instrument from c. 1775. Ease of playing increased greatly with a design improvement from 1843 based on Boehm's flute.
After the hautboy came the clarinet. This instrument astonished every beholder, not so much, perhaps, on account of its sound, as its machinery. One that could manage the keys of a clarinet, forty five years ago, so as to play a tune, was one of the wonders of the age. Children of all ages would crowd around the performer, and wonder and admire when the keys were moved. [Nathaniel D. Gould, "Church Music in America," Boston, 1853]
German Clarinet, Swedish klarinett, Italian clarinetto, etc. all are from French. Related: Clarinettist.
copperhead (n.): Trigonocephalus contortrix, 1775, American English, so called for color markings between its eyes; see copper + head (n.). Poisonous "sneak snakes" (because they bite without warning), the name is said to have been first used in reference to Northerners suspected of Southern sympathies in Greeley's New York "Tribune," July 20, 1861. Charles H. Coleman, "The Use of the Term 'Copperhead' During the Civil War" ["Mississippi Valley Historical Review" 25 (1938), p.263] traces it to an anonymous letter against Ohio anti-war Democrats in the Cincinnati "Commercial" newspaper in the summer of 1861. It seems not to have been in widespread use until summer 1862.