英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

begin: begin: [OE] Begin comes from a prehistoric West Germanic compound verb *biginnan, which also produced German and Dutch beginnen; the origin of the second element, *ginnan, is not known for certain. The form gin was common in the Middle Ages and up until about 1600; this was a shortening, perhaps not so much of begin as of the now obsolete ongin ‘begin’, which was far more widespread than begin in Old English.
blaze: blaze: There are three distinct words blaze in English. The commonest, meaning ‘fire, flame’ [OE], comes from a prehistoric Germanic *blasōn. Its original signification was ‘torch’ (in the sense, of course, of a burning piece of wood or bunch of sticks), but by the year 1000 the main current meaning was established. The precise source of blaze ‘light-coloured mark or spot’ [17] is not known for certain, but there are several cognate forms in other Germanic languages, including Old Norse blesi and German blässe; perhaps the likeliest candidate as far as blaze is concerned is Middle Low German bles.

The verbal usage, as in ‘blaze a trail’ (that is, by making conspicuous marks on trees) originated in the mid 18th century. The related German adjective blass ‘pale’, which originally meant ‘shining’, points up the fact that ultimately these two words blaze are related, the primeval sense ‘shining’ having diverged on the one hand through ‘pale’, on the other through ‘glowing, burning’.

The third blaze, ‘proclaim’ [14], as in ‘blaze abroad’, is now seldom encountered. It originally meant ‘blow a trumpet’, and comes ultimately from the Indo-European base *bhlā- (source of blow). Its immediate source in English was Middle Dutch blāsen. Despite its formal and semantic similarity, it does not appear to have any connection with blazon [13], which comes from Old French blason ‘shield’, a word of unknown origin.

A blazer [19] got its name from being a brightly coloured jacket (from blaze meaning ‘fire, flame’). It originated among English university students in the late 19th century. According to a correspondent in the Daily News 22 August 1889, the word was originally applied specifically to the red jackets worn by members of the ‘Lady Margaret, St John’s College, Cambridge, Boat Club’.

But by the 1880s its more general application had become widely established: in the Durham University Journal of 21 February 1885 we read that ‘the latest novelty … for the river is flannels, a blazer, and spats’.
=> blow
coffee: coffee: [16] The word coffee first reached us in a form which we would now recognize in the 17th century, probably via Italian caffè. It is ultimately, however, of Middle Eastern origin, and the earliest spellings recorded in English reflect this: chaoua, cauwa, kahue, cahve, etc are modelled closely on Turkish kahveh and its source, Arabic qahwah.

Where the Arabic word came from is not known for certain: probably it is based in some way on Kaffa, the name of an area in the south Abyssinian highlands from which the coffee tree is said to originate, but it has also been claimed to have signified originally some sort of wine. Café [19] comes of course from French café, whose source was Italian caffè. From the French word was derived caféine, from which English gets caffeine [19], while Spanish café produced cafetero ‘coffeeseller’, source of English cafeteria [20].
=> café, caffeine, cafeteria
elder: elder: Elder ‘older’ [OE] is not, of course, the same word as elder the tree-name [OE]. The former began life in prehistoric Germanic as *althizon, the comparative form of *althaz ‘old’. Gradually, the vowel i had an effect on the preceding vowel a, and by Old English times the word had become eldra – hence modern English elder. The regularized form older appeared in the 16th century. The derivative elderly dates from the 17th century. The tree-name comes from Old English ellærn, a word whose origin is not known for certain (although it may perhaps be related to English alder). The intrusive d began to appear in the 14th century.
=> old
engage: engage: [15] Vulgar Latin had a noun *wadium ‘pledge’ (it came from Germanic *wathjam, source also of English wed and wage). From it was derived a verb *wadiāre ‘pledge’, which formed the basis of a compound *inwadiāre. Germanic w became g in French (hence French Guillaume for William), so the Old French descendant of *inwadiāre was engager, acquired by English as engage. (The superficially similar gauge [15] is probably not related, although it is not known for certain what its ultimate source is.)
=> wage, wed
flag: flag: English has at least three separate words flag, none of whose origins are known for certain. Both the noun ‘cloth used as an emblem’ [16] and the verb ‘droop, decline’ [16] may have developed from an obsolete 16th-century adjective flag ‘drooping, hanging down’, but no one knows where that came from. Flag the plant [14] is probably related to Danish flæg ‘yellow iris’, but beyond that the trail goes cold. Flag as in flag-stone [15] originally meant ‘piece of turf’.

It probably came from Old Norse flaga ‘stone slab’. This also gave English flaw (which originally meant ‘flake’), which is related to English floe, and goes back to a Germanic base, a variant of which produced English flake.
=> flake, flaw, floe
gypsum: gypsum: [17] The word gypsum originated among the Semitic languages, with a relative or ancestor of Arabic jibs and Hebrew gephes ‘plaster’. Greek adopted this unknown form as gúpsos, which passed into Latin as gypsum. (An Italian descendant of gypsum is gesso ‘plaster’, borrowed by English in the 16th century for ‘plaster as a surface for painting on’.)
=> gesso
hockey: hockey: [19] The first known unequivocal reference to the game of hockey comes in William Holloway’s General Dictionary of Provincialisms 1838, where he calls it hawkey, and describes it as ‘a game played by several boys on each side with sticks, called hawkeybats, and a ball’ (the term came from West Sussex). It is not known for certain where the word originated, but it is generally assumed to be related in some way to hook, with reference to the hockey stick’s curved end. The Galway Statutes of 1527 refer to the ‘hurling of the little ball with hockie sticks or staves’, which may mean ‘curved sticks’.
=> hook
irk: irk: [13] Irk originally meant ‘grow tired’, and although it is not known for certain, its underlying sense could be ‘work until one is weary’: for a possible source may be Old Norse yrkja ‘work’. The present-day sense ‘annoy’ is first recorded in the 15th century.
jewel: jewel: [13] Originally, jewel meant ‘costly adornment made from precious stones or metals’ – a sense now largely restricted to the collective form jewellery [14]. The main modern sense ‘gem’ emerged towards the end of the 16th century. The word comes from Anglo-Norman juel, but exactly where that came from is not known for certain. It is generally assumed to be a derivative of jeu ‘game’, which came from Latin jocus (source of English jocular, joke, etc).
=> jeopardy, jocular, joke
leaf: leaf: [OE] Leaf goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *laubaz, which also produced words for ‘foliage’ in other modern Germanic languages (German laub, Dutch loof, Swedish löf, and Danish løv). It is not known for certain where the Germanic word came from, although a connection has been suggested with Russian lupit’ ‘bark’. It may also lie behind the modern English words lobby and lodge.
=> lobby, lodge
must: must: English has three words must. By far the commonest is of course the verb, ‘have to’ [OE], which originated in Old English as the past tense of the now obsolete mūt ‘may, must’. It has relatives in German muss and Dutch moet, but its ultimate origins are not known for certain (there may be some distant link with Germanic ‘measure’-words, such as English mete, suggesting a semantic progression from an original ‘time measured out for doing something’, through ‘have time to do something’, ‘be able to do something’, and ‘be allowed to do something’ to ‘have to do something’). Must ‘unfermented grape juice for making into wine’ [OE] comes from Latin mustum ‘new wine’, a noun use of the adjective mustus ‘new’. Mustard is a derivative.

And the esoteric must ‘sexual frenzy in elephants, camels, etc’ [19] comes via Urdu from Persian mast ‘drunk’.
=> mustard
narrow: narrow: [OE] Narrow comes from a prehistoric Germanic *narwaz, whose only other modern representative is Dutch naar ‘unpleasant, sad’ (although it also occurs in Norva-sund, the Old Norse term for the ‘Straits of Gibraltar’). It is not known for certain where it comes from, but a connection has been suggested with Latin nervus ‘sinew, bowstring’ (source of English nerve) and Old High German snuor ‘string’, which might point back to an ancestral sense ‘tying together tightly’.
north: north: [OE] North is a general West and North Germanic word for ‘north’, represented also in German, Swedish, and Danish nord and Dutch noorden. It was also borrowed into French (from Old English) as nord, from where it spread into Italian and Romanian as nord and into Spanish as norte. It is not known for certain where it came from, but a link has been suggested with nertro-, a word for ‘left’ in the extinct Oscan- Umbrian languages of Italy, which might mean that the underlying meaning of north is ‘to the left as one faces the rising sun’ (modern Irish tuaisceart ‘north’ was based on a word meaning ‘left’).
notch: notch: [16] Not much is known for certain about the word notch, apart from the fact that its immediate source, Anglo-Norman noche, existed at least a couple of centuries before English acquired it. There may well be some connection with Old French oche ‘groove, notch’ (probable source of the English darts term oche ‘line where the dart-thrower stands’); the initial n could well have arisen by misdivision of a preceding indefinite article (as happened with nickname).
=> oche
puke: puke: [16] The first record of puke in English is in Jaques’s famous ‘Seven Ages of Man’ speech in Shakespeare’s As You Like It 1600: ‘At first the infant, mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms’. Its origins are not known for certain, but it presumably goes back ultimately to some Germanic base imitative of the sound of regurgitation (perhaps the same as produced German spucken ‘spew, spit’).
pull: pull: [OE] The main Old and Middle English word for ‘pull’ was draw, and pull did not really begin to come into its own until the late 16th century. It is not known for certain where it came from. Its original meaning was ‘pluck’ (‘draw, drag’ is a secondary development), and so it may well be related to Low German pūlen ‘remove the shell or husk from, pluck’ and Dutch peul ‘shell, husk’.
quail: quail: Quail the bird [14] and quail ‘cower’ [15] are not related. The former comes via Old French quaille from medieval Latin coacula, which probably originated in imitation of the bird’s grating cry. It is not known for certain where the verb (which originally meant ‘decline, wither, give way’) came from, although some have linked it with another verb quail, now obsolete, which meant ‘curdle’. This came via Old French quailler from Latin coāgulāre, source of English coagulate.
=> coagulate
quintessence: quintessence: [15] Just as modern particle physicists search for the ultimate constituent of matter, the common denominator of all known forces, so medieval alchemists tried to find a fifth primary essence, which together with earth, air, fire, and water formed the substance of all heaven and earth. This fifth essence, higher and more ethereal than the other four, was postulated by Aristotle, who called it aithēr ‘either’.

Another Greek term for it was pemptē ousíā ‘fifth essence’, which was translated into medieval Latin as quinta essentia – whence, via French, English quintessence. The metaphorical sense ‘most perfect or characteristic embodiment’ began to emerge in the second half of the 16th century. Other English words based on quintus ‘fifth’, the ordinal form of Latin quinque ‘five’, include quintet [19] and quintuple [16].
self: self: [OE] Self is a general Germanic word, closely related to German selbe, Dutch zelf, Swedish sjelv, and Danish selv. These all point back to a prehistoric Germanic *selba-. Where this came from is not known for certain, although it seems likely to be related in some way to various pronouns denoting ‘oneself’, such as German sich and French se. According to John Hacket in his Scrinia reserata 1693, the word selfish was coined in the early 1640s by the Presbyterians.
ship: ship: [OE] Ship comes from a prehistoric Germanic *skipam, which also produced German schiff, Dutch schip, Swedish skepp, and Danish skib. It is not known for certain where this came from, although a link has been suggested with Latvian shkibīt ‘cut, hew’, in which case the underlying meaning of ship could be ‘hollowed-out log’ – a ‘dugout’, in other words.

The Old High German form schif was borrowed into Italian as schifo, and this made its way via French esquif into English as skiff [16]. The Middle Dutch form schip had a derivative schipper ‘captain of a small ship’, which has given English skipper [14]. And equip too comes from a relative of English ship.
=> equip, skiff, skipper
star: star: [OE] Star is a general Germanic word, with relatives in German stern, Dutch ster, Swedish stjärna, and Danish stjerne. These were all descended from a prehistoric Germanic base *ster-, which had come down unaltered from Indo-European *ster- ‘star’, source also of Latin stēlla ‘star’ (from which English gets stellar [16]) and Greek astér ‘star’ (from which English gets asterisk, astronomy, disaster, etc).

The ultimate source of the Indo-European base is not known for certain, but the traditional view is that it comes from the base *ster- ‘spread out’, the underlying notion being of the stars ‘spread out’ in the sky. Sterling ‘British money’ was originally named from the design of a small ‘star’ on a coin, but starling is not etymologically related. The modern sense of star, ‘leading performer’, is first recorded in the early 19th century.
=> asterisk, astronomy, disaster, stellar, sterling
termagent: termagent: [13] Termagent was originally the name of a blustering arrogant Muslim deity in medieval mystery plays; it was not used for a ‘quarrelsome woman’ until the 16th century. It was an alteration of an earlier Tervagant, which came via Old French Tervagant from Italian Trivigante. It is not known for certain where this came from. It has been interpreted as literally ‘three-wandering’, in allusion to the moon travelling in different guises to heaven, earth, and hell, as if it were formed from Latin tri- ‘three’ and vagārī ‘wander’ (source of English vagabond, vagrant, etc); but it may simply have been borrowed from some unknown oriental language.
toy: toy: [14] Nothing is known for certain about the origins of toy. It originally meant ‘amorous dalliance’ (‘So said he, and forbore not glance or toy, of amorous intent, well understood of Eve’, Milton, Paradise Lost 1667), traces of which survive in the verbal sense ‘amuse oneself idly’. ‘Plaything’ first appeared towards the end of the 16th century.
troubadour: troubadour: [18] A troubadour is etymologically someone who ‘finds’ – that is, ‘composes’ – songs. The word comes via French troubadour from Provençal trobador, a derivative of the verb trobar (whose modern French equivalent is trouver). This seems originally to have meant ‘compose’, and later to have shifted its semantic ground via ‘invent’ to ‘find’.

It is not known for certain where it came from, but one theory traces it back via a Vulgar Latin *tropāre to Latin tropus ‘figure of speech’ (source of English trope [16]). This in turn was borrowed from Greek trópos ‘turn’, a relative of English trophy and tropic. If this is so, its ancestral meaning would be ‘use figures of speech’.
=> tropic
wood: wood: [OE] The ancestral meaning of wood is probably ‘collection of trees, forest’; ‘tree’ (now obsolete) and ‘substance from which trees are made’ are secondary developments. The word goes back to prehistoric Germanic *widuz, which also produced Swedish and Danish ved ‘firewood’, and it has Celtic relatives in Gaelic fiodh ‘wood, woods’, Welsh gwydd ‘trees’, and Breton gwez ‘trees’.

Its ultimate source is not known for certain, although it has been suggested that it may go back to the Indo- European base *weidh- ‘separate’ (source also of English divide and widow). According to this theory, it would originally have denoted a ‘separated’ or ‘remote’ piece of territory, near the outer edge or borders of known land; and since such remote, uninhabited areas were usually wooded, it came to denote ‘forest’ (forest itself may mean etymologically ‘outside area’, and the Old Norse word for ‘forest’, mork, originally signified ‘border area’).
cyberspace (n.): 1982, often as two words at first, coined by science fiction writer William Gibson (best known for "Neuromancer") and used by him in a short story published in 1982, from cyber- (see cybernetics) + space (n.).
eccentric (n.): early 15c., "eccentric circle or orbit," originally a term in Ptolemaic astronomy, "circle or orbit not having the Earth precisely at its center," from Middle French eccentrique and directly from Medieval Latin eccentricus (noun and adjective), from Greek ekkentros "out of the center" (as opposed to concentric), from ek "out" (see ex-) + kentron "center" (see center (n.)). Meaning "odd or whimsical person" is attested by 1817 (S.W. Ryley, "The Itinerant, or Memoirs of an Actor").
June 4 [1800].--Died in the streets in Newcastle, William Barron, an eccentric, well known for many years by the name of Billy Pea-pudding. [John Sykes, "Local Records, or Historical Register of Remarkable Events which have Occurred Exclusively in the Counties of Durham and Northumberland, Town and County of Newcastle Upon Tyne, and Berwick Upon Tweed," Newcastle, 1824]
frieze (n.1): "sculptured horizontal band in architecture," 1560s, from Middle French frise, originally "a ruff," from Medieval Latin frisium "embroidered border," variant of frigium, which is probably from Latin Phrygium "Phrygian; Phrygian work," from Phrygia, the ancient country in Asia Minor known for its embroidery (Latin also had Phrygiae vestes "ornate garments"). Meaning "decorative band along the top of a wall" was in Old French.
magpie (n.): the common European bird, known for its chattering, c. 1600, earlier simply pie (early 13c.); first element from Mag, nickname for Margaret, long used in proverbial and slang English for qualities associated generally with women, especially in this case "idle chattering" (as in Magge tales "tall tales, nonsense," early 15c.; also compare French margot "magpie," from Margot, pet form of Marguerite).

Second element, pie, is the earlier name of the bird, from Old French pie, from Latin pica "magpie," fem. of picus "woodpecker," from PIE root *(s)peik- "woodpecker, magpie" (cognates: Umbrian peica "magpie," Sanskrit pikah "Indian cuckoo," Old Norse spætr, German Specht "woodpecker"); possibly from PIE root *pi-, denoting pointedness, of the beak, perhaps, but the magpie also has a long, pointed tail. The birds are proverbial for pilfering and hoarding, can be taught to speak, and have been regarded since the Middle Ages as ill omens.
Whan pyes chatter vpon a house it is a sygne of ryghte euyll tydynges. [1507]
Divination by number of magpies is attested from c. 1780 in Lincolnshire; the rhyme varies from place to place, the only consistency being that one is bad, two are good.