英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

blend: blend: [13] Old English had a verb blendan, but it meant ‘make blind’ or ‘dazzle’. Modern English blend appears to come from blend-, the present stem of Old Norse blanda ‘mix’ (a relative of Old English blandan ‘mix’). The ultimate source of this is not clear, but it does not seem to be restricted to Germanic (Lithuanian has the adjective blandus ‘thick’ in relation to soup), so it may not be too far-fetched to suggest a link with blind, whose Indo-European ancestor *bhlendhos meant among other things ‘confused’.
broker: broker: [14] Broker has no connection with the past tense of break. It comes from Anglo- Norman brocour ‘small trader’, but its ultimate origin is not clear. A variant Anglo-Norman form abrocour has fuelled speculation as to a link with Spanish alboroque ‘sealing of a bargain’ and Portuguese alborcar ‘barter’, which are presumably of Arabic origin (the alrepresenting the Arabic definite article); but other etymologists have sought to link the word with broach, as if the underlying sense were ‘someone who sells wine from [that is, by broaching] the cask’, and hence any ‘retailer’.
bull: bull: There are three distinct words bull in English. The oldest is the animal name, which first appears in late Old English as bula. Related forms occur in other Germanic languages, including German bulle and Dutch bul. The diminutive bullock is also recorded in late Old English. The second bull is ‘edict’ [13], as in ‘papal bull’. This comes from medieval Latin bulla ‘sealed document’, a development of an earlier sense ‘seal’, which can be traced back to classical Latin bulla ‘bubble’ (source also of English bowl, as in the game of bowls; of boil ‘heat liquid’; of budge [16], via Old French bouger and Vulgar Latin *bullicāre ‘bubble up, boil’; and probably of bill ‘statement of charges’).

And finally there is ‘ludicrous or selfcontradictory statement’ [17], usually now in the phrase Irish bull, whose origins are mysterious; there may be a connection with the Middle English noun bul ‘falsehood’ and the 15th-to 17th-century verb bull ‘mock, cheat’, which has been linked with Old French boler or bouller ‘deceive’. The source of the modern colloquial senses ‘nonsense’ and ‘excessive discipline’ is not clear.

Both are early 20th-century, and closely associated with the synonymous and contemporary bullshit, suggesting a conscious link with bull the animal. In meaning, however, the first at least is closer to bull ‘ludicrous statement’. Bull’s-eye ‘centre of a target’ and ‘large sweet’ are both early 19th-century. Bulldoze is from 1870s America, and was apparently originally applied to the punishment of recalcitrant black slaves; it has been conjectured that the underlying connotation was of ‘giving someone a dose fit for a bull’.

The term bulldozer was applied to the vehicle in the 1930s.
=> phallic; bill, bowl, budge
clever: clever: [13] Clever is rather a mystery word. There is one isolated instance of what appears to be the word in an early 13th-century bestiary, where it means ‘dextrous’, and the connotations of ‘clutching something’ have led to speculation that it may be connected with claw. It does not appear on the scene again until the late 16th century, when its associations with ‘agility’ and ‘sprightliness’ may point to a link with Middle Dutch klever, of similar meaning. The modern sense ‘intelligent’ did not develop until the 18th century.
crock: crock: English has two words crock. The one meaning ‘earthenware pot’ [OE] is now almost never heard on its own, except perhaps in the phrase ‘crock of gold’, but it is familiar from its derivative crockery [18]. Its immediate antecedents appear to be Germanic (Dutch, for instance, has the related kruik), but cognate forms appear in other Indo-European languages, including Welsh crochan and Greek krōssós. Cruet [13] comes from Anglo-Norman *cruet, a diminutive frorm of Old French crue ‘pot’, which was borrowed from Old Saxon krūka, a relative of English crock. Crock ‘decrepit person, car, etc’ [15] is earliest encountered (in Scottish English) in the sense ‘old ewe’.

The connotation of being ‘broken-down’, and the existence of near synonyms such as Dutch krak, Flemish krake, and Swedish krake, all meaning ‘wornout old horse’, suggest some kind of link with the word crack.
=> crockery, cruet
curtail: curtail: [16] The now defunct English noun curtal meant ‘horse with a docked tail’. It was borrowed in the 16th century from French courtault, a derivative of the adjective court ‘short’. Like English curt [17] this came from Latin curtus ‘cut off, shortened’, which in common with English short and shear, can be traced back to an Indo-European base *ker- or *sker- ‘cut’. In the late 16th century the noun was converted into a verb, originally meaning literally ‘dock a horse’, and the close semantic link with ‘tails’ led to its alteration to curtail.
=> cuirass, curt, shear, shirt, short, skirt
find: find: [OE] Find is a widespread Germanic verb, with relations in German (finden), Dutch (vinden), Swedish (finna), and Danish (finde). Further back in time, however, its ancestry is disputed. Some have connected it with various words for ‘path, way’ in Indo-European languages, such as Sanskrit panthās and Russian put’, and with related forms denoting ‘go, journey’, like Old Saxon fāthi ‘going’ and Old High German fendeo ‘walker’; others have suggested a link with Latin petere ‘seek’.
joke: joke: [17] Latin jocus meant ‘jest, joke’ (a possible link with Old High German gehan ‘say’ and Sanskrit yācati ‘he implores’ suggests that its underlying meaning was ‘word-play’). It passed into Old French as jeu, which lies behind English jeopardy and probably also jewel. But English also went direct to Latin for a set of words connected with ‘fun’ and ‘humour’, among them jocose [17] and jocular [17], both from Latin derivatives of jocus (the superficially similar jocund, incidentally, is etymologically unrelated), and joke itself, which was originally introduced in the form joque or joc (‘coming off with so many dry joques and biting repartees’, Bishop Kennett’s translation of Erasmus’s Encomium Moriae 1683). Juggler belongs to the same word family.
=> jeopardy, jewel, jocular, juggler
little: little: [OE] Little goes back to the prehistoric West Germanic base *lut-, which also produced Dutch luttel and may have been the source of the Old English verb lūtan ‘bow down’. Some have detected a link with Old English lot ‘deceit’, Old Norse lýta ‘dishonour, blame’, Russian ludit’ ‘deceive’, and Serbo-Croat lud ‘foolish’.
lunch: lunch: [16] When lunch first appeared on the scene, at the end of the 16th century, it was used for a ‘slice or hunk of food’ (‘He shall take bread and cut it into little lunches into a pan with cheese’, Richard Surfleet, Country Farm 1600). It appears to have been borrowed from Spanish lonja ‘slice’. The roughly contemporaneous luncheon, probably just an arbitrary lengthening of lunch, came to be used in the early 17th century for a ‘snack’ (the link with ‘hunk or piece of food’ is obvious), and eventually for a ‘light meal’. Lunch returned to the language in this sense at the beginning of the 19th century, as an abbreviation of luncheon.
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
net: net: English has two distinct words net. The commoner and more ancient, ‘mesh’ [OE], is a widespread Germanic word: German has the related netz, Dutch and Danish net, and Swedish nät. Its ultimate origins are not known, although a link with Latin nassa ‘wicker basket for catching fish’ has been suggested. Net ‘without deductions’ [14] comes from French net, which was borrowed into English again two centuries later as neat.

It was originally used, like its French source, for ‘trim, clean’, but this developed via ‘unadulterated, unmixed’ to, by the early 16th century, ‘free from any (further) deduction’. The alternative spelling nett dates from the 16th century.
=> neat
position: position: [15] Position comes via Old French from Latin positiō, a noun formed from posit-, the past participial stem of Latin pōnere ‘put, place’. This was also the source of English posit [17], positive [13] (which etymologically means ‘placed down, laid down’, hence ‘emphatically asserted’), post (in the senses ‘mail’ and ‘job’), and posture [17].

And in addition it lies behind a wealth of English verbs (compose, depose, dispose [14], expose [15], impose, interpose [16], oppose, repose, suppose, transpose [14], etc) whose form underwent alteration by association with late Latin pausāre ‘stop’ (see POSE); postpone exceptionally has retained its link with pōnere.
=> compose, depose, dispose, expose, impose, oppose, positive, post, postpone, repose, suppose, transpose
posthumous: posthumous: [17] Latin postumus functioned as a superlative form of post ‘after’, and meant ‘last of all’. It was often applied to a child ‘born after the death of its father’, as being the final offspring that man could possibly have, and so began to pick up associations with the ‘period after death’. This led in turn to the perception of a link with humus ‘ground’ (source of English humble and humus) and humāre ‘bury’, and so postumus became posthumus. English adapted it direct from Latin.
random: random: [14] The antecedents of random are somewhat murky. It originally meant ‘impetuosity, sudden speed, violence’, and only in the mid 17th century emerged as an adjective meaning ‘haphazard’. It was borrowed from Old French randon, which was probably a derivative of the verb randir ‘run impetuously’. This in turn was based on Frankish *rant ‘running’, which was apparently descended from prehistoric Germanic *randa.

This originally meant ‘edge’ (it is the source of English rand [OE], now obsolete as a term for ‘edge’, but reintroduced in the 20th century via Afrikaans as the name of the basic South African currency unit), but it was also widely used for ‘shield’, and it is thought that the link with ‘running impetuously’ may be the notion of soldiers running along with their shields.
=> rand
stride: stride: [OE] Stride comes from a prehistoric Germanic base *strīd-, whose other descendants (German streiten and Dutch strijden ‘quarrel’, Swedish and Danish strid ‘strife, affliction’) suggest a basic underlying meaning ‘severity, great effort’. There may also be a link with English strife and strive. Straddle [16] comes from a variant of the same base. The use of the plural noun strides for ‘trousers’ dates from the late 19th century.
=> straddle
strop: strop: [OE] Strop has now narrowed down in meaning to the specialized ‘strip of leather for sharpening a razor’, but it used to be a much more general term for a leather band or loop. It goes back to a prehistoric West Germanic word that was probably an adoption of Latin stroppus ‘strap, band’. That in turn may well have come from Greek strophos ‘twisted band’, from strephein ‘turn’.

Old French had estrope from the same West Germanic source, and that probably reinforced the English word in the 14th century. Scottish pronunciation turned strop into strap [17], and that has now inherited most of the general functions of strop in English at large. As for stroppy ‘bad-tempered and uncooperative’, first recorded in 1951, no convincing link with strop ‘leather strip’ has ever been established (strop ‘fit of stroppiness’ is a back-formation from stroppy).

One suggestion is that it may be a radically stripped-down version of obstreperous.
swim: swim: [OE] Together with German schwimmen, Dutch zwemmen, Swedish simma, and Danish svømme, swim goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *swemjan, a derivative of the same base as produced Old Norse sund ‘swimming’ (source of English sound ‘channel, strait’). A link with Welsh chwyfio ‘stir, wave, brandish’ has been suggested.
=> sound
tulip: tulip: [16] Tulip and turban [16] are ultimately the same word. Both come from Persian dulband, and the name was applied to the plant because of its flower’s supposed resemblance to a turban. Dulband was borrowed into Turkish as tuliband, and this made its way into English via early modern French tulipan and modern Latin tulipa, acquiring its botanical meaning along the way (relatives that preserve the link with turban slightly more closely include Swedish tulpan, Danish tulipan, Italian tulipano, and Russian tjul’pan). Meanwhile Turkish tuliband evolved to tülbend, and this passed into English via Italian turbante and French turbant as turban.
=> turban
vignette: vignette: [18] A vignette is etymologically a picture with a border of ‘vine’ tendrils, leaves, etc round it. The word comes from Old French vignette, a diminutive form of vigne ‘vine’ (source of English vine and related to English wine). It was originally applied to decorations in medieval manuscripts, but it was then transferred to the border around pictures, and finally to the pictures themselves. The conscious link with ‘vines’ now became broken, and in the 19th century the term moved on to a ‘head-andshoulders photograph’ and (metaphorically) a ‘short verbal description’.
=> vine, wine
warren: warren: [14] A warren is etymologically a ‘fenced-off’ area. The word was acquired from warenne, the Anglo-Norman version of Old French garenne ‘game-park’. This in turn came from Gaulish *varrenna ‘area bounded by a fence’, which was derived from *varros ‘post’. The specific link with rabbits (originally as a reserve set aside for breeding rabbits, now an area where wild rabbits live) is a secondary development.
wash: wash: [OE] Etymologically, to wash something is probably to clean it with ‘water’. Like German waschen, Dutch wasschen, and Swedish vaska, it goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *waskan, which seems to have been derived from *wat-, the base which produced English water. (Washer ‘small disc with a hole’ [14] is usually assumed to come from the same source, but its semantic link with wash has never been satisfactorily explained.)
=> water
wing: wing: [12] Wing was borrowed from Old Norse vængir, source also of Swedish and Danish vinge and Norwegian veng. This came ultimately from the Indo-European base *we- ‘blow’, and the missing semantic link with ‘wing’ may be ‘flutter’.
cunt (n.): "female intercrural foramen," or, as some 18c. writers refer to it, "the monosyllable," Middle English cunte "female genitalia," by early 14c. (in Hendyng's "Proverbs" -- ʒeve þi cunte to cunni[n]g, And crave affetir wedding), akin to Old Norse kunta, Old Frisian, Middle Dutch, and Middle Low German kunte, from Proto-Germanic *kunton, which is of uncertain origin. Some suggest a link with Latin cuneus "wedge," others to PIE root *geu- "hollow place," still others to PIE *gwen-, root of queen and Greek gyne "woman."

The form is similar to Latin cunnus "female pudenda" (also, vulgarly, "a woman"), which is likewise of disputed origin, perhaps literally "gash, slit," from PIE *sker- (1) "to cut," or literally "sheath," from PIE *kut-no-, from root *(s)keu- "to conceal, hide."
Hec vulva: a cunt. Hic cunnus: idem est. [from Londesborough Illustrated Nominale, c. 1500, in "Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies," eds. Wright and Wülcker, vol. 1, 1884]
First known reference in English apparently is in a compound, Oxford street name Gropecuntlane cited from c. 1230 (and attested through late 14c.) in "Place-Names of Oxfordshire" (Gelling & Stenton, 1953), presumably a haunt of prostitutes. Used in medical writing c. 1400, but avoided in public speech since 15c.; considered obscene since 17c.

in Middle English also conte, counte, and sometimes queinte, queynte (for this, see q). Chaucer used quaint and queynte in "Canterbury Tales" (late 14c.), and Andrew Marvell might be punning on quaint in "To His Coy Mistress" (1650).
"What eyleth yow to grucche thus and grone? Is it for ye wolde haue my queynte allone?" [Wife of Bath's Tale]
Under "MONOSYLLABLE" Farmer lists 552 synonyms from English slang and literature before launching into another 5 pages of them in French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. [A sampling: Botany Bay, chum, coffee-shop, cookie, End of the Sentimental Journey, fancy bit, Fumbler's Hall, funniment, goatmilker, heaven, hell, Itching Jenny, jelly-bag, Low Countries, nature's tufted treasure, parenthesis, penwiper, prick-skinner, seminary, tickle-toby, undeniable, wonderful lamp, and aphrodisaical tennis court, and, in a separate listing, Naggie. Dutch cognate de kont means "a bottom, an arse," but Dutch also has attractive poetic slang ways of expressing this part, such as liefdesgrot, literally "cave of love," and vleesroos "rose of flesh."

Alternative form cunny is attested from c. 1720 but is certainly much earlier and forced a change in the pronunciation of coney (q.v.), but it was good for a pun while coney was still the common word for "rabbit": "A pox upon your Christian cockatrices! They cry, like poulterers' wives, 'No money, no coney.' " [Philip Massinger: "The Virgin-Martyr," Act I, Scene 1, 1622]