英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

carry: carry: [14] For such a basic and common word, carry has a surprisingly brief history. It does not go back to some prehistoric Indo-European root, but was formed less than 1000 years ago in Anglo-Norman or Old Northern French, on the basis of carre or car (immediate source of English car). The verb carier thus meant literally ‘transport in a wheeled vehicle’. This sense was carried over into English, and though it has since largely given way to the more general ‘convey’, it is preserved in the derivative carriage, in such expressions as ‘carriage paid’.
=> car, carriage
handle: handle: [OE] Etymologically, a handle is nothing more or less than ‘something to be held in the hand’. Likewise the verb handle, together with Germanic relatives like German handeln and Swedish handla, began life as ‘hold, touch, feel with the hands’ (the German and Swedish verbs have since lost this original literal meaning, and now have only the metaphorical senses ‘deal with’, ‘trade’, etc).
=> hand
adjective: late 14c., as an adjective, "adjectival," in noun adjective, from Old French adjectif (14c.), from Latin adjectivum "that is added to (the noun)," neuter of adjectivus "added," from past participle of adicere "to throw or place (a thing) near," from ad- "to" (see ad-) + comb. form of iacere "to throw" (see jet (v.)). Also as a noun from late 14c. In 19c. Britain, the word itself often was a euphemism for the taboo adjective bloody.
They ... slept until it was cool enough to go out with their 'Towny,' whose vocabulary contained less than six hundred words, and the Adjective. [Kipling, "Soldiers Three," 1888]
attrition (n.): 1540s, "abrasion, a scraping," from Latin attritionem (nominative attritio), literally "a rubbing against," noun of action from past participle stem of atterere "to wear, rub away," figuratively "to destroy, waste," from ad- "to" (see ad-) + terere "to rub" (see throw (v.)). The earliest sense in English is from Scholastic theology (late 14c.), "sorrow for sin merely out of fear of punishment," a minor irritation, and thus less than contrition. The sense of "wearing down of military strength" is a World War I coinage (1914). Figurative use by 1930.
board (n.1): Old English bord "a plank, flat surface," from Proto-Germanic *burdam (cognates: Old Norse borð "plank," Dutch bord "board," Gothic fotu-baurd "foot-stool," German Brett "plank"), from PIE *bhrdh- "board," from root *bherdh- "to cut." See also board (n.2), with which this is so confused as practically to form one word (if indeed they were not the same word all along).

A board is thinner than a plank, and generally less than 2.5 inches thick. The transferred meaning "food" (late 14c.) is an extension of the late Old English sense of "table" (compare boarder, boarding); hence, also, above board "honest, open" (1610s). A further extension is to "table where council is held" (1570s), then transferred to "leadership council, council (that meets at a table)," 1610s.
compliment (n.): "An act, or expression of civility, usually understood to include some hypocrisy, and to mean less than it declares" [Johnson], 1570s, complement, via French compliment (17c.), from Italian complimento "expression of respect and civility," from Vulgar Latin *complire, for Latin complere "to complete" (see complete (adj.)), via notion of "complete the obligations of politeness." Same word as complement but by a different etymological route; differentiated by spelling after 1650.
gauge (n.): early 15c., "fixed standard of measure" (surname Gageman is early 14c.), from Old North French gauge "gauging rod" (see gauge (v.)). Meaning "instrument for measuring" is from 1670s; meaning "distance between rails on a railway" is from 1841.
Railway-gage, the distance between perpendiculars on the insides of the heads of the two rails of a track. Standard gage is 4 feet 8 1/2 inches; anything less than this is narrow gage; anything broader is broad gage. The dimension was fixed for the United States by the wheels of the British locomotive imported from the Stephenson Works in 1829. [Century Dictionary]
half: Old English half, halb (Mercian), healf (W. Saxon) "side, part," not necessarily of equal division (original sense preserved in behalf), from Proto-Germanic *halbaz "something divided" (cognates: Old Saxon halba, Old Norse halfr, Old Frisian, Middle Dutch half, German halb, Gothic halbs "half"), perhaps from PIE (s)kel- (1) "to cut" (see shell (n.)). Noun, adjective, and adverb all were in Old English.

Used also in Old English phrases, as in modern German, to mean "one half unit less than," for example þridda healf "two and a half," literally "half third." The construction in two and a half, etc., is first recorded c. 1200. Of time, in half past ten, etc., first attested 1750; in Scottish, the half often is prefixed to the following hour (as in German, halb elf = "ten thirty"). To go off half-cocked in the figurative sense "speak or act too hastily" (1833) is in allusion to firearms going off prematurely; half-cocked in a literal sense "with the cock lifted to the first catch, at which position the trigger does not act" is recorded by 1750. In 1770 it was noted as a synonym for "drunk."
kit-cat: club founded by Whig politicians in London, 1703; so called from Christopher ("Kit") Catling, keeper of the tavern on Shire Lane, near Temple Bar, in which the club first met. Meaning "a size of portrait less than half length" (1754), supposedly is because the dining room in which portraits of club members hung was too low for half-length portraits.
LP: 1948, abbreviation of long-playing phonograph record.
The most revolutionary development to hit the recording industry since the invention of the automatic changer is the Long Playing record, which can hold an entire 45-minute symphony or musical-comedy score on a single 12-inch disk. ... The disks, released a few weeks ago by Columbia Records and made of Vinylite, have phenomenally narrow grooves (.003 of an inch). They are played at less than half the speed of the standard old-style records. ["Life" magazine, July 26, 1948]
mere (adj.): c. 1400, "unmixed, pure," from Old French mier "pure" (of gold), "entire, total, complete," and directly from Latin merus "unmixed" (of wine), "pure; bare, naked;" figuratively "true, real, genuine," probably originally "clear, bright," from PIE *mer- "to gleam, glimmer, sparkle" (cognates: Old English amerian "to purify," Old Irish emer "not clear," Sanskrit maricih "ray, beam," Greek marmarein "to gleam, glimmer"). Original sense of "nothing less than, absolute" (mid-15c., now only in vestiges such as mere folly) existed for centuries alongside opposite sense of "nothing more than" (1580s, as in a mere dream).
poppy (n.): late Old English popig, popæg, from West Germanic *papua-, probably from Vulgar Latin *papavum, from Latin papaver "poppy," perhaps a reduplicated form of imitative root *pap- "to swell." Associated with battlefields and war dead at least since Waterloo (1815). Poppy-seed is from early 15c.; in 17c. it also was a small unit of length (less than one-twelfth of an inch).
-s (1): suffix forming almost all Modern English plural nouns, gradually extended in Middle English from Old English -as, the nominative plural and accusative plural ending of certain "strong" masculine nouns (such as dæg "day," nominative/accusative plural dagas "days"). The commonest Germanic declension, traceable back to the original PIE inflection system, it is also the source of the Dutch -s plurals and (by rhotacism) Scandinavian -r plurals (such as Swedish dagar).

Much more uniform today than originally; Old English also had a numerous category of "weak" nouns that formed their plurals in -an, and other strong nouns that formed plurals with -u. Quirk and Wrenn, in their Old English grammar, estimate that 45 percent of the nouns a student will encounter will be masculine, nearly four-fifths of them with genitive singular -es and nominative/accusative plural in -as. Less than half, but still the largest chunk.

The triumphs of -'s possessives and -s plurals represent common patterns in language: using only a handful of suffixes to do many jobs (such as -ing), and the most common variant squeezing out the competition. To further muddy the waters, it's been extended in slang since 1936 to singulars (such as ducks, sweets, babes) as an affectionate or diminutive suffix.

Old English single-syllable collectives (sheep, folk) as well as weights, measures, and units of time did not use -s. The use of it in these cases began in Middle English, but the older custom is preserved in many traditional dialects (ten pound of butter; more than seven year ago; etc.).
scalper (n.): 1650s as a type of surgical instrument; 1760 as "one who removes scalps," agent noun from scalp (v.).

Meaning "person who re-sells tickets at unauthorized prices for a profit," 1869, American English; earliest reference is to theater tickets, but often used late 19c. of brokers who sold unused portions of railway tickets. [Railways charged less per mile for longer-distance tickets; therefore someone travelling from New York to Chicago could buy a ticket all the way to San Francisco, get out at Chicago and sell it to a scalper, and come away with more money than if he had simply bought a ticket to Chicago; the Chicago scalper would hold the ticket till he found someone looking for a ticket to San Francisco, then sell it to him at a slight advance, but for less than the official price.] Perhaps from scalp (v.); scalper was a generic term for "con man, cheater" in late 19c. Or perhaps the connecting sense is the bounty offered for scalps of certain destructive animals (attested in New England from 1703) and sometimes Indians (i.e., having only part of something, but still getting paid). Some, though, see a connection rather to scalpel, the surgical instrument.
shoppe (n.): one of several Middle English variations of shop (n.). It appears in Chaucer. Noted by 1918 as an antiquarian affectation in U.S. commercial establishments.
YE EAT SHOPPE
I admit that the name is against it. As a matter of fact, 732 Eighth Avenue is nothing more nor less than a good old-fashioned midnight lunch-room camouflaged by a flossy title. [Helen Worden Erskine, "The Real New York," 1933]
short-wave (adj.): in reference to radio wavelength less than c.100 meters, 1907, from short (adj.) + wave (n.).
under (prep., adv.): Old English under (prep.) "beneath, among, before, in the presence of, in subjection to, under the rule of, by means of," also, as an adverb, "beneath, below, underneath," expressing position with reference to that which is above, from Proto-Germanic *under- (cognates: Old Frisian under, Dutch onder, Old High German untar, German unter, Old Norse undir, Gothic undar), from PIE *ndher- "under" (cognates: Sanskrit adhah "below;" Avestan athara- "lower;" Latin infernus "lower," infra "below").

Productive as a prefix in Old English, as in German and Scandinavian (often forming words modeled on Latin ones in sub-). Notion of "inferior in rank, position, etc." was present in Old English. With reference to standards, "less than in age, price, value," etc., late 14c. As an adjective, "lower in position; lower in rank or degree" from 13c. Also used in Old English as a preposition meaning "between, among," as still in under these circumstances, etc. (though this may be an entirely separate root; see understand).

Under the weather "indisposed" is from 1810. Under the table is from 1921 in the sense of "very drunk," 1940s in sense of "illegal." To get something under (one's) belt is from 1954; to keep something under (one's) hat "secret" is from 1885; to have something under (one's) nose "in plain sight" is from 1540s; to speak under (one's) breath "in a low voice" is attested from 1832. To be under (someone's) thumb "entirely controlled" (by that person) is recorded from 1754.
velocipede (n.): 1819, "wheeled vehicle propelled by alternate thrusts of each foot on the ground," 1819, from French vélocipède (19c.), from Latin velox (genitive velocis) "swift, speedy" (see velocity) + pedem, accusative of pes "foot," from PIE root *ped- (1) "a foot" (see foot (n.)). The mechanical ancestor of the bicycle, it was tinkered with and improved; the name continued for some time and was applied to an early kind of modern bicycle or tricycle from 1849. See bicycle (n.).
The Velocipede has been introduced into England, under letters patent, by Mr. Johnson, a coachmaker in Long-Acre, by whom it has been greatly improved, both in lightness and strength. "The road from Ipswich to Whitton," says the Bury paper, "is travelled every evening by several pedestrian hobby-horses; no less than six are seen at a time, and the distance, which is 3 miles, is performed in 15 minutes." ["The Athenaeum," May 1, 1819]
dolichocephalic: "Having a relatively long skull (typically with the breadth less than 80 (or 75) per cent of the length)", Mid 19th century: from Greek dolikhos 'long' + -cephalic.
phoney: "Not genuine; fraudulent", Late 19th century: of unknown origin. More The fraudulent practice of the fawney-rig is probably the source of phoney ‘not genuine, fraudulent’, which was first recorded in the USA at the end of the 19th century. In 1823 Pierce Egan, a chronicler of popular pursuits and low life in England, described how the fawney-rig worked. ‘A fellow drops a brass ring, double gilt, which he picks up before the party meant to be cheated, and to whom he disposes of it for less than its supposed, and ten times more than its real, value.’ The word fawney came from Irish fáinne ‘a ring’. The phoney war was the period of comparative inaction at the beginning of the Second World War, between the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 and that of Norway in April 1940. The expression is now used of any coming confrontation, as in ‘the debates on tax in the pre-election phoney war’ (Earth Matters, 1997).