quword 趣词
Word Origins Dictionary
- put



[put 词源字典] - put: [12] Put is one of the commonest of English verbs, but its origins are uncertain. It goes back to an Old English *putian, never actually recorded but inferred from the verbal noun putung ‘instigation’, but where that came from is not known. It was presumably related to Old English potian ‘push, thrust’, whose Middle English descendant pote formed the basis of modern English potter [16]. The golfing term putt [18] is essentially the same word as put, differentiated in spelling and pronunciation.
=> potter, putt[put etymology, put origin, 英语词源] - syllogism




- syllogism: [14] A syllogism is etymologically something ‘reasoned together’, hence ‘inferred’. The word comes via Old French sillogisme and Latin syllogismus from Greek sullogismós, a derivative of sullogīzesthai ‘reason together, infer’. This was a compound verb formed from the prefix sun- ‘together’ and logízesthai ‘reason, reckon, compute’, a derivative of lógos ‘word, discourse, computation’ (source of English logarithm, logic, etc).
=> logarithm, logic - sample (n.)




- c. 1300, "something which confirms a proposition or statement," from Anglo-French saumple, a shortening of Old French essample, from Latin exemplum "a sample" (see example). Meaning "small quantity (of something) from which the general quality (of the whole) may be inferred" (usually in a commercial sense) is recorded from early 15c.; sense of "specimen for scientific sampling" is from 1878. As an adjective from 1820.
- straw (n.)




- Old English streaw (rare) "stems or stalks of certain species of grains," apparently literally "that which is scattered or strewn," related to streowian (see strew), from Proto-Germanic *strawam "that which is scattered" (cognates: Old Norse stra, Danish straa, Swedish strå, Old Saxon stro, Old Frisian stre, Old Dutch, Old High German stro, Dutch stroo, German Stroh "straw"), from PIE *stere- "to spread" (see structure (n.)). The notion perhaps is of dried grain stalks strewn on a floor as carpeting or bedding.
As a type of what is trifling or unimportant, attested from late 13c. Meaning "hollow tube through which a drink is sucked" is recorded from 1851. To draw straws as a means of deciding something is recorded from 1779 (the custom probably is older). As an adjective, "made of straw," mid-15c.; hence "false, sham." Straw poll is from 1932; earlier straw vote (1866). Straw hat first attested mid-15c. To clutch (or grasp or catch) at straws (1748) is what a drowning man proverbially would do. The last straw (1836 apart from the full phrase) is from the proverbial image: "it is the last straw that breaks the camel's back" (or, less often, the mare's, the horse's, or the elephant's), an image in use in English by 1755.
Let it not, however, be inferred that taxation cannot be pushed too far : it is, as the Oriental proverb says, the last straw that overloads the camel ; a small addition, if ill-timed, may overturn the whole. ["The Scots Magazine," April 1799]