quword 趣词
Word Origins Dictionary
- almond




- almond: [13] The l in almond is a comparatively recent addition; its immediate source, Latin amandula, did not have one (and nor, correspondingly, do French amande, Portuguese amendoa, Italian mandola, or German mandel). But the relative frequency of the prefix al- in Latin-derived words seems to have prompted its grafting on to amandula in its passage from Latin to Old French, giving a hypothetical *almandle and eventually al(e)mande.
French in due course dropped the l, but English acquired the word when it was still there. Going further back in time, the source of amandula was Latin amygdula, of which it was an alteration, and amygdula in turn was borrowed from the Greek word for ‘almond’, amygdálē. The Latin and Greek forms have been reborrowed into English at a much later date in various scientific terms: amygdala, for instance, an almond-shaped mass of nerve tissue in the brain; amygdalin, a glucoside found in bitter almonds; and amygdaloid, a rock with almondshaped cavities.
- hundred (n.)




- Old English hundred "the number of 100, a counting of 100," from Proto-Germanic *hundrath (cognates: Old Norse hundrað, German hundert); first element is Proto-Germanic *hundam "hundred" (cognate with Gothic hund, Old High German hunt), from PIE *km-tom "hundred," reduced from *dkm-tom- (cognates: Sanskrit satam, Avestan satem, Greek hekaton, Latin centum, Lithuanian simtas, Old Church Slavonic suto, Old Irish cet, Breton kant "hundred"), from *dekm- "ten" (see ten).
Second element is Proto-Germanic *rath "reckoning, number" (as in Gothic raþjo "a reckoning, account, number," garaþjan "to count;" see read (v.)). The common word for the number in Old English was simple hund, and Old English also used hund-teontig.
In Old Norse hundrath meant 120, that is the long hundred of six score, and at a later date, when both the six-score hundred and the five-score hundred were in use, the old or long hundred was styled hundrath tolf-roett ... meaning "duodecimal hundred," and the new or short hundred was called hundrath ti-rætt, meaning "decimal hundred." "The Long Hundred and its use in England" was discussed by Mr W.H. Stevenson, in 1889, in the Archcæological Review (iv. 313-27), where he stated that amongst the Teutons, who longest preserved their native customs unimpaired by the influence of Latin Christianity, the hundred was generally the six-score hundred. The short hundred was introduced among the Northmen in the train of Christianity. ["Transactions" of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society, 1907]
Meaning "division of a county or shire with its own court" (still in some British place names and U.S. state of Delaware) was in Old English and probably represents 100 hides of land. The Hundred Years War (which ran intermittently from 1337 to 1453) was first so called in 1874. The original Hundred Days was the period between Napoleon's restoration and his final abdication in 1815.