英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

aim [aim 词源字典]: aim: [14] Etymologically, aim is a contraction of estimate (see ESTEEM). The Latin verb aestimāre became considerably shortened as it developed in the various Romance languages (Italian has stimare, for instance, and Provençal esmar). In Old French its descendant was esmer, to which was added the prefix a- (from Latin ad- ‘to’), producing aesmer; and from one or both of these English acquired aim. The notion of estimating or calculating was carried over into the English verb, but died out after about a hundred years. However, the derived sense of calculating, and hence directing, one’s course is of equal antiquity in the language.
=> esteem, estimate[aim etymology, aim origin, 英语词源]
akimbo: akimbo: [15] Akimbo was borrowed from Old Norse. Its original English spelling (which occurs only once, in the Tale of Beryn 1400) was in kenebowe, which suggests a probable Old Norse precursor *i keng boginn (never actually discovered), meaning literally ‘bent in a curve’ (Old Norse bogi is related to English bow); hence the notion of the arms sticking out at the side, elbows bent. When the word next appears in English, in the early 17th century, it has become on kenbow or a kenbo, and by the 18th century akimbo has arrived.
=> bow
alimony: alimony: [17] Alimony is an anglicization of Latin alimōnia, which is based on the verb alere ‘nourish’ (source of alma ‘bounteous’, as in alma mater, and of alumnus). This in turn goes back to a hypothetical root *al-, which is also the basis of English adolescent, adult, altitude (from Latin altus ‘high’), and old.

The original sense ‘nourishment, sustenance’ has now died out, but the specialized ‘support for a former wife’ is of equal antiquity in English. The -mony element in the word represents Latin -mōnia, a fairly meaning-free suffix used for forming nouns from verbs (it is related to -ment, which coincidentally was also combined with alere, to form alimentary), but in the later 20th century it took on a newly productive role in the sense ‘provision of maintenance for a former partner’. Palimony ‘provision for a former non-married partner’ was coined around 1979, and in the 1980s appeared dallymony ‘provision for somebody one has jilted’.
=> adult, altitude, alumnus, old
Alzheimer: Alzheimer: Alzheimer’s disease [20] This serious brain disorder was first described in a scientific journal in 1912, and was given its name in honour of the German neurologist Alois Alzheimer (1864–1915). For many decades the term was largely confined to specialist medical journals, but in the 1970s, as the disease became better known, it seeped into the public domain.
Alzheimer's disease: Alzheimer's disease: [20] This serious brain disorder was first described in a scientific journal in 1912, and was given its name in honour of the German neurologist Alois Alzheimer (1864–1915). For many decades the term was largely confined to specialist medical journals, but in the 1970s, as the disease became better known, it seeped into the public domain.
animal: animal: [14] Etymologically, an animal is a being which breathes (compare DEER). Its immediate source was the Latin adjective animālis ‘having a soul’, a derivative of the noun anima ‘breath, soul’ (which also gave English the verb and adjective animate [15]). Anima is a member of a set of related words in which the notions of ‘breath, wind’ and ‘spirit, life’ are intimately connected: for instance, Greek ánemos ‘wind’ (possible source of English anemone), Latin animus ‘spirit, mind, courage, anger’ (source of English animosity [15] and animus [19]), Sanskrit ániti ‘breathe’, Old English ōthian ‘breathe’, Swedish anda ‘breath, spirit’, and Gothic usanan ‘breathe out’.

The ‘breath’ sense is presumably primary, the ‘spirit, life’ sense a metaphorical extension of it.
=> anemone, animate, animosity, animus
antimacassar: antimacassar: [19] An antimacassar was a cloth spread over chairbacks in the 19th and early 20th centuries to protect them from greasy hair. It took its name from Macassar oil, a proprietary brand of hair oil made by Rowland and Son, allegedly from ingredients obtained from Makassar, a region of the island of Sulawesi (formerly Celebes) in Indonesia.
antimony: antimony: [15] Antimony, from medieval Latin antimōnium, was used by alchemists of the Middle Ages for ‘stibnite’, the mineral from which antimony is obtained, and for ‘stibium’, or ‘black antimony’, a heated and powdered version of the mineral used for eye make-up. The element antimony itself was first described in the late 18th century, when it was called regulus of antimony; the British chemist Humphry Davy appears to have been the first to apply the simple term antimony to it, in 1812.

The ultimate origins of the word antimony are obscure, but attempts have been made to link it with Latin stibium (source of Somebody, the chemical symbol for antimony). It has been speculated that Latin antimōnium may have been a modification of Arabic ithmid, which was perhaps borrowed from Greek stimmi or stíbi (source of Latin stibium).

This in turn has been conjecturally traced back to an Egyptian word stm, which was used for a sort of powder applied to the eyelids as make-up.
approximate: approximate: see proximity
azimuth: azimuth: see zenith
bimbo: bimbo: [20] Bimbo most recently made its mark on the English language in the 1980s, when it was in heavy use among journalists to denigrate buxom young women of limited IQ who sold the secrets of their affairs with the rich and famous to the press. It was by no means a newcomer, though. It first crossed the Atlantic to America, from Italy, in the late 1910s. In Italian it means ‘baby’, and US slang took it up in the colloquial sense of baby, for referring to a usually hapless fellow.

By the 1920s it was being applied equally to young women, especially promiscuous or empty-headed ones (the latter feature probably reinforced by the appearance of dumbo ‘fool’ in the early 1930s).
blimp: blimp: [20] The original blimp was a sort of small non-rigid military airship used in World War I. Its name is said to have come from its official designation as ‘type B (limp)’ (as opposed to ‘type A (rigid)’). Its rotund flaccidity suggested it in 1934 to the cartoonist David Low (1891– 1963) as a name for a character he had invented, a fat pompous ex-army officer (in full, Colonel Blimp) who was always cholerically airing reactionary views. The British public evidently recognized the character as an all too common type, and his name became a generic one, to the extent of inspiring spin-offs such as blimpish.
brim: brim: [13] Brim appears out of the blue at the beginning of the 13th century, meaning ‘edge, border’, with no apparent ancestor in Old English. It is usually connected with Middle High German brem and Old Norse barmr, both ‘edge’, which would point to a prehistoric Germanic source *berm- or *barm-. It has been conjectured that this could derive from the stem *ber- (source of English bear ‘carry’), and that the etymological meaning of brim is thus ‘raised border’. The modern sense ‘rim of a hat’ is first recorded in Shakespeare.
=> bear
brimstone: brimstone: see sulphur
bulimia: bulimia: [19] The condition now called ‘bulimia’ – in which bouts of overeating are followed by bouts of purging – was recognized and so named in the 1970s. The word used to name it, however, is much more ancient than that. It goes back to Greek boulimia, which meant ‘ravenous hunger’ (it was formed from limos ‘hunger’, with the prefix bou-; this may well have been adapted from bous ‘ox’, in which case the word would have meant literally ‘the hunger of an ox’).

It originally came into English, via medieval Latin, in the late 14th century, and for many hundred years its standard form was bulimy. It was applied to a sort of hunger so extreme that it could be categorized as an illness.
chime: chime: [13] Etymologically, chime is the same word as cymbal – indeed it originally meant ‘cymbal’ in English – but the route by which it reached English is not altogether clear. Latin cymbalum was borrowed into Old French as chimbe, which is perhaps the most likely source of the English word, whose earliest forms include chimbe. However, Old English also acquired the Latin word, as cimbal, and it has been speculated that this may have survived into the Middle English period as *chimbel, whose last syllable was misinterpreted as bell.

This would have opened the way to a misanalysis of the word as chime bell, a term which does actually occur from the 13th to the 15th centuries. This theory has the advantage of explaining the transference of the word’s meaning from ‘cymbals’ to ‘bells’, which occurred between the 14th and 15th centuries.
=> cymbal
chimney: chimney: [14] Greek kámīnos meant ‘furnace’ (it was related to kamárā ‘vaulted room’, source of English camera and chamber). It was borrowed into Latin as camīnus, from which the adjective camīnātus ‘having a furnace, oven, etc’ was derived. By late Latin times this had become a noun, camīnāta, which passed into Old French as cheminee, and thence into English. The original meanings ‘fireplace’ and ‘stove’ persisted until the 19th century, but already in Old French the sense ‘flue’ had developed, which was finally to win out.
=> camera, chamber
claim: claim: [13] The etymological notion behind claim is of ‘calling out’. It comes from claim-, the present stem of Old French clamer, which goes back to Latin clāmāre ‘cry out, shout’ (whose derived noun clāmor is the source of English clamour [14]). Relatives of clāmāre include clārus (source of English clear) and possibly callāre ‘call out’ (whence English council); and it formed the basis of the English verbs acclaim, exclaim, and proclaim (their spelling was altered through association with claim).

These words’ ultimate source was the onomatopoeic Indo- European base *klā-, which also produced low ‘make the noise characteristic of cattle’.
=> acclaim, clamour, clear, council, exclaim, low, proclaim
climate: climate: [14] The notion underlying climate is of ‘sloping’ or ‘leaning’. It comes, via Old French climat or late Latin clīma (whence English clime [16]), from Greek klīma ‘sloping surface of the earth’, which came ultimately from the same source (the Indo-European base *kli-) as produced English lean. Greek geographers assigned the earth’s surface to various zones according to the angle which their ‘slope’ made with the rays of the sun (originally there were seven of these, ranging from 17 degrees of latitude North to 48 degrees, but later the system was elaborated so that each hemisphere was divided into 24 bands or ‘climates’ of latitude).

This was the sense in which the word passed into Latin, where it broadened out into simply ‘region’, and hence ‘weather associated with a particular area’.
=> ladder, lean
climax: climax: [16] Etymologically, a climax is a series of steps by which a goal is achieved, but in the late 18th century English, anticipating the culmination, started using it for the goal itself. It comes, via late Latin, from Greek klimax ‘ladder’, which was ultimately from the same source (the Indo-European base *kli-) as produced English lean. This came to be used metaphorically as a rhetorical term for a figure of speech in which a series of statements is arranged in order of increasing forcefulness, and hence for any escalating progression: ‘the top of the climax of their wickedness’, Edmund Burke 1793.

Whence modern English ‘high point’.
=> ladder, lean
climb: climb: [OE] The original notion contained in climb seems not to have been so much ‘ascent’ as ‘holding on’. Old English climban came from a prehistoric West Germanic *klimban, a nasalized variant of the base which produced English cleave ‘adhere’. To begin with this must have meant strictly ‘go up by clinging on with the hands and feet’ – to ‘swarm up’, in fact – but already by the late Old English period we find it being used for ‘rising’ in general. The original past tense clamb, which died out in most areas in the 16th century, is probably related to clamp ‘fastening’ [14].
=> clamp, cleave
compliment: compliment: [17] Compliment and complement, so often confused, are in effect doublets. They come from the same ultimate source, Latin complēmentum, a noun derived from complēre ‘fill up, finish’ (source of English complete and accomplish). English borrowed complement direct from Latin in the 14th century in the sense ‘fulfilment, accomplishment’, and by the 16th century this had developed the more specific metaphorical meaning ‘fulfilment of the obligation of politeness’ – hence ‘polite words of praise’.

But then in the 17th century came competition in the form of compliment, also meaning ‘polite words of praise’. This also came from Latin complēmentum, but along a circuitous route via Vulgar Latin *complimentum, Spanish cumplimiento, and French compliment. It gradually took over from complement in this ‘flattering’ sense, while complement went on to develop its leading current meaning, ‘counterpart’, in the 19th century.
=> accomplish, complement, complete, comply, expletive, plenary, plenty
condiment: condiment: see recondite
crime: crime: [14] Crime is one of a wide range of English words (including certain, crisis, critic, decree, discern, discrete, discriminate, excrement, riddle ‘sieve’, secret, and secretary) which come ultimately from or are related to the Greek verb krínein ‘decide’. This was a relative of Latin cernere ‘decide’, from whose root evolved the noun crīmen ‘judgment, accusation, illegal act’. This passed via Old French crimne (later crime) into English, where traces of the original meaning ‘accusation’ survived until the 17th century.
=> certain, critic, decree, discriminate, excrement, secret
crimp: crimp: see cram
crimson: crimson: [14] The colour term crimson comes ultimately from the name of a small scale insect, the kermes, from whose dried bodies a red dyestuff is obtained. Kermes comes from Arabic qirmaz, which in turn was derived from Sanskrit krmi-ja ‘(dye) produced by a worm’, a compound formed from krmi- ‘worm’ and ja- ‘produced, born’. From qirmaz was derived Arabic qirmazī ‘red colour’, which passed into English via metathesized Old Spanish cremesin. The medieval Latin version carmesīnum is thought to have been the source of English carmine [18], through blending with minium ‘red lead’ (whence English miniature).
=> carmine
decimal: decimal: [17] Decimal comes from decimālis, a medieval Latin coinage based on decimus ‘tenth’, the ordinal derivative of Latin decem ‘ten’ (a relative of English ten). Other descendants of decem include December, decimate, dime, and the prefix deci-, while its Greek cousin déka has given us decade [15] and the prefix deca-.
=> decade, december, decimate, dime, ten, tithe
decimate: decimate: [17] Decimate is a cause célèbre amongst those who apparently believe that words should never change their meanings. The original general signification of its Latin source, the verb decimāre, was the removal or destruction of one tenth (it was derived from Latin decem ‘ten’), and it may perhaps strike the 20th century as odd to have a particular word for such an apparently abstruse operation.

It does, however, arise out of two very specific procedures in the ancient world: the exaction of a tax of one tenth (for which indeed English has the ultimately related word tithe), and the practice in the Roman army of punishing a body of soldiers guilty of some crime such as mutiny by choosing one in ten of them by lot to be put to death. Modern English does not perhaps have much use for a verb with such specialized senses, but the general notion of impassive and indiscriminate slaughter implied in the Roman military use led, apparently as early as the mid- 17th century, to the modern sense ‘kill or destroy most of’.
=> decimal, ten
denim: denim: [17] The name of the fabric from which jeans are made had its origins in a sort of serge produced in the southern French town of Nîmes. The French naturally enough called it serge de Nîmes, but the original meaning of this soon became lost when English borrowed it as serge de Nim, and the last two words came to be run together as denim.
detriment: detriment: [15] Etymologically, detriment denotes damage caused by ‘wearing away’. The word comes via Old French from Latin dētrīmentum, a derivative of dēterere ‘wear away’ (whose past participle is the source of English detritus [18]). This was a compound verb formed from the prefix dē- ‘away’ and terere ‘rub’ (from which English gets attrition and trite). The generalized metaphorical sense ‘harm’ had already developed in classical Latin.
=> attrition, detritus, trite
dime: dime: [14] Dime originally meant ‘tenth part’, and often specifically a ‘tax of one tenth, tithe’: ‘From all times it was ordained to pay dimes or tithes unto the Lord’, James Howell, Lexicon tetraglotton 1660. It came via Old French disme from Latin decima ‘tenth part’, a derivative of decem ‘ten’ (to which English ten is related). The application of the word to a coin worth one tenth of a US dollar dates from the 1780s.
=> decimal, ten
dimension: dimension: see measure
diminish: diminish: [15] Diminish is a hybrid verb, the result of a marriage between the now obsolete diminue [14] and the virtually obsolete minish [14], both of which meant ‘make smaller’. Diminue came via Old French diminuer from Latin dīminuere ‘break into small pieces’; it was a compound verb formed from the prefix dē- ‘from’ and minuere ‘lessen’ (source of English minute). Minish came via Old French menuiser from Vulgar Latin *minūtiāre, a derivative of Latin minūtus ‘small’; this, bringing the history of diminish full circle, was an adjectival use of the past participle of minuere.
=> minute
dimity: dimity: see drill
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
discriminate: discriminate: see discern
eliminate: eliminate: [16] To eliminate somebody is literally to ‘kick them out of doors’. The word comes from the past participle of Latin ēlīnāre, a compound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and līmen ‘threshhold’ (source also of English subliminal and probably sublime). At first it was used in English with its original Latin sense (‘the secounde sorte thearfore, that eliminate Poets out of their citie gates’, Giles Fletcher, Christ’s Victorie 1610), and it was not until the early 18th century that the more general modern notion of ‘exclusion’ began to develop.
=> sublime, subliminal
facsimile: facsimile: see fax
gimmick: gimmick: [20] Gimmick originally meant ‘dishonest contrivance’ – indeed, in the first known printed reference to it, in George Maine’s and Bruce Grant’s Wise-crack dictionary 1926 (an American publication), it is defined specifically as a ‘device for making a fair game crooked’. The modern sense ‘stratagem for gaining attention’ seems to have come to the fore in the 1940s. The origins of the word are a mystery, although it has been suggested that it began as gimac, an anagram of magic used by conjurers.
glimmer: glimmer: see gleam
glimpse: glimpse: [14] Glimpse originally meant ‘shine faintly’. It comes from the same Germanic source (*glaim-, *glim-) as produced English gleam and glimmer. The modern sense ‘see briefly’ developed in the 18th century from the noun glimpse, originally a ‘momentary or dim flash’, hence ‘faint brief appearance’, and finally ‘sight of something afforded by such an appearance’.
=> gleam, glimmer
grim: grim: [OE] Indo-European *ghrem-, *ghromprobably originated in imitation of the sound of rumbling (amongst its descendants was grumins ‘thunder’ in the extinct Baltic language Old Prussian). In Germanic it became *grem-, *gram-, *grum-, which not only produced the adjective *grimmaz (source of German grimm, Swedish grym, and English, Dutch, and Danish grim) and the English verb grumble [16], but was adopted into Spanish as grima ‘fright’, which eventually arrived in English as grimace [17].
=> grimace, grumble
him: him: [OE] Him was originally the dative case of Old English hē ‘he’, which in the late Old English period gradually started to take over from the original accusative hine as the general object form (the ’un or ’n still occasionally found in southern English dialects for ‘him’ may represent the last vestiges of this). The dative ending -m is also found in, for example, German ihm (dative of er ‘he’) and Dutch hem.
=> he
image: image: [13] Latin imāgō meant a ‘likeness of something’ (it probably came from the same source as imitate). It subsequently developed a range of secondary senses, such as ‘echo’ and ‘ghost’, which have not survived the journey via Old French into English, but the central ‘likeness’ remains in place. Derived from the noun in Latin was the verb imāginārī ‘form an image of in one’s mind, picture to oneself’, which became English imagine [14]. (Latin imāgō, incidentally, was used in the 1760s by the Swedish naturalist Linnaeus for an ‘adult insect’ – based on the Latin sense ‘natural shape’, the idea being that the insect had achieved its final perfect form after various pupal forms – and English took the term over at the end of the 18th century.)
=> imitate
imbecile: imbecile: [16] Etymologically imbecile means ‘without support’, hence ‘weak’. It came via French from Latin imbēcillus, a compound adjective formed from the prefix in- ‘not’ and an unrecorded *bēcillum, a diminutive variant of baculum ‘stick’ (from which English gets bacillus and bacterium). Anyone or anything without a stick or staff for support is by extension weak, and so the Latin adjective came to mean ‘weak, feeble’. This broadened out to ‘weak in mind’, and was even used as a noun for ‘weak-minded person’, but English did not adopt these metaphorical uses until the late 18th century.
=> bacillus, bacterium
imitate: imitate: [16] Latin imitāri meant ‘make a copy of’. It was formed from the base *im-, which also lies behind the Latin ancestors of English emulate [16] and image; all three words share the basic meaning element ‘likeness’. English acquired the word via the Latin past participle imitātus.
=> emulate, image
immaculate: immaculate: [15] A macula in Latin was a ‘spot’ or ‘stain’ (as well as a ‘hole in a net’, which gave English the mail of chain mail). Hence anything that was immaculātus (an adjective formed with the negative prefix in-) was ‘spotless’ – ‘perfect’.
=> chainmail
immediate: immediate: see medium
immense: immense: see measure
immerse: immerse: see merge