quword 趣词
Word Origins Dictionary
- gynaecology



[gynaecology 词源字典] - gynaecology: [19] The Greek word for ‘woman’ was guné. It has relatives in several modern Indo-European languages, including Swedish kvinna, Danish kvinde, Irish Gaelic bean, Welsh benyw, Czech zhena, Russian zhenshchina, Persian zan (whence ultimately English zenana ‘harem’ [18]), and the now obsolete English quean [OE], and goes back to Indo-European *gwen-.
The resumption of the study of Greek in the 16th century led to increasing adoption of compounds involving guné into English. The earliest recorded ones are gyneconome ‘member of a board of Athenian magistrates whose job was to ensure that women behaved properly’ [16] and gynocracy ‘rule by women’ [17]. Gynaecology is a comparative latecomer, not appearing before the 1840s.
=> queen, zenana[gynaecology etymology, gynaecology origin, 英语词源] - hit




- hit: [11] Hit is one of those words, now so common that we assume it has always been around, that is in fact a comparative latecomer to the English language, and one, what is more, whose ancestry is not at all clear. The standard Old English verb for ‘strike’ was slēan (modern English slay), but at the end of the Old English period hit suddenly appeared. It was borrowed from Old Norse hitta, a verb of unknown origin which meant not ‘strike’ but ‘come upon, find’ (as Swedish hitta still does). This sense was carried over into English (and still survives in hit upon), and it was not until the 13th century that the meaning ‘strike’ began to appear.