英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

Adelphia [Adelphia 词源字典]: district of London, so called because it was laid out by four brothers of a family named Adam, from Greek adelphos "brother," literally "from the same womb," from copulative prefix a- "together with" + delphys "womb," perhaps related to dolphin. The district was the site of a popular theater c. 1882-1900, which gave its name to a style of performance.[Adelphia etymology, Adelphia origin, 英语词源]
Bloomsbury: 1910, in reference to the set of Bohemian writers, artists, and intellectuals (including E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Vanessa and Clive Bell, John Maynard Keynes) centered on Lytton Strachey; so called from the London neighborhood where several lived and worked.
Women in love with buggers and buggers in love with womanizers, I don't know what the world is coming to. [Lytton Strachey]
The place name is recorded 1291 as Blemondesberi "manor held by the Blemond family," from Blémont in France. It was laid out for housing in 17c., fashionable from 18c.
boulevard (n.): 1769, from French boulevard (15c.), originally "top surface of a military rampart," from a garbled attempt to adopt Middle Dutch bolwerc "wall of a fortification" (see bulwark) into French, which at that time lacked a -w- in its alphabet. The notion is of a promenade laid out atop demolished city walls, a way which would be much wider than urban streets. Originally in English with conscious echoes of Paris; since 1929, in U.S., used of multi-lane limited-access urban highways. Early French attempts to digest the Dutch word also include boloart, boulever, boloirque, bollvercq.
Cleveland: city in Ohio, U.S., laid out 1796 by Gen. Moses Cleaveland (1754-1806) and later named for him. His descendants included U.S. President Grover Cleveland (1837-1908). The family name is from place names in England based on Middle English cleove, a variant of cliff.
comportment (n.): c. 1600, from Middle French comportement "bearing, behavior," from comporter (13c.) "to be disposed, arranged, laid out," from Latin comportare (see comport).
Madison Avenue: "values and business of advertising and public relations," 1954, from the street in Manhattan, laid out c. 1836 and named for U.S. President James Madison. The concentration of advertising agencies there seems to date from the 1940s.
prostrate (adj.): mid-14c., "lying face-down" (in submission, worship, etc.), from Latin prostratus, past participle of prosternere "strew in front, throw down," from pro- "forth" (see pro-) + sternere "to spread out," from PIE root *stere- "to spread, extend, stretch out" (see structure (n.)). Figurative use from 1590s. General sense of "laid out, knocked flat" is from 1670s.
southpaw (n.): "lefthander," 1885, originally baseball slang, of pitchers, often said to have been coined by Finley Peter Dunne ("Mr. Dooley"), Chicago sports journalist and humorist, in the days when, it is said, baseball diamonds regularly were laid out with home plate to the west. But south paw "a person's left hand" is attested from 1848 in the slang of pugilism.
T-shirt (n.): 1920, in reference to the shape it makes when laid out flat (t-shirt is thus incorrect).
Vinland: name supposedly given by Leif Erikssson to lands he explored in northeastern North America c. 1000; it could mean either "vine-land" or "meadow-land," and either way was perhaps coined to encourage settlement (compare Greenland).

After Columbus' journeys and the European exploration of the New World, evidence in the old sagas of the earlier Norse discovery of America had been noticed from time to time by those who could read them. In early 19c. the notion was seriously debated by Humboldt and other European scholars before winning their general acceptance by the 1830s. The case for the identification of Vinland with North America began to be laid out in English-language publications in 1840. Thoreau knew of it ("Ktaadn," 1864). Physical evidence of the Norse discovery was uncovered by the excavations at L'Anse aux Meadows in 1960.